Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin (April 2, 1903 – July 10, 1988) was an award-winning

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

, and

ethnohistorian Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may n ...

. Her research and directorship of the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Research Project at Indiana University has been used to backup Native Americans during court cases with the US government over treaty claims.

Early life and education

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

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

. She graduated from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, in 1923. After graduating, Erminie married and lived in New Orleans. She later moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, after her first marriage dissolved, to write for a local newspaper before returning to Berkeley and pursuing a master's degree in anthropology (1930). Her master's thesis was entitled "Mythological Elements common to the Kowa and Five Other Plains Tribes". While studying under

Alfred Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...

in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Erminie met and later married her second husband, Carl Voegelin. They lived and worked together for the next two decades.

Career

Her second marriage was to linguistic anthropologist

Charles F. Voegelin Charles Frederick "Carl" Voegelin (January 14, 1906 – May 22, 1986), often cited as C. F. Voegelin, was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was one of the leading authorities on Indigenous languages of North America, specifically the ...

, with whom she jointly conducted fieldwork among Native American peoples. In 1933

Eli Lilly Eli Lilly (July 8, 1838 – June 6, 1898) was an American soldier, pharmacist, chemist, and businessman who founded the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical corporation. Lilly enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War and r ...

, president of the prominent pharmaceutical company in

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

, created a graduate fellowship at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, to honor Native American history in southern Indiana. Charles Voegelin was the first recipient for the fellowship but it was then given to Erminie. Fieldwork among the

Tübatulabal people The Tübatulabal are an indigenous people of Kern River Valley in the Sierra Nevada range of California. They may have been the first people to make this area their permanent home. Today many of them are enrolled in the Tule River Indian Trib ...

northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

undertaken in 1933 led to her first book, ''Tübatulabal Ethnography'', published by the

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...

in 1941. She holds the distinction of being the first woman to receive a doctoral degree in anthropology from Yale University when she received her degree in 1939 with a dissertation entitled "Shawnee Mortuary Customs," published five years later by the

Indiana Historical Society The Indiana Historical Society (IHS) is one of the United States' oldest and largest historical societies and describes itself as "Indiana's Storyteller". It is housed in the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center at 450 West Ohio Street ...

. In the 1940s, Wheeler-Voegelin worked in the upper Great Lakes conducting linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork among the

Ottawas The Odawa (also Ottawa or Odaawaa ), said to mean "traders", are an Indigenous American ethnic group who primarily inhabit land in the Eastern Woodlands region, commonly known as the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. They ha ...

and

Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...

living in the Upper Peninsula of

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

. A specialist in Native American

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...

, she founded the

American Society for Ethnohistory American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

in 1954 and was its first editor of the journal ''

Ethnohistory Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may n ...

'' until 1964. She was also the first person to teach a course in Ethnohistory at an American University. Wheeler-Voegelin taught in anthropology, history, and folklore at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

, Bloomington, beginning in the fall of 1943. She received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1947 to pursue comparative studies of the folklore and mythology of American Indians and

Eskimo Eskimo () is an exonym used to refer to two closely related Indigenous peoples: the Inuit (including the Alaska Native Iñupiat, the Greenlandic Inuit, and the Canadian Inuit) and the Yupik peoples, Yupik (or Siberian Yupik, Yuit) of eastern Si ...

s. In 1948, she became president of the

American Folklore Society The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote the responsible ...

, and from 1949 to 1951, she served as secretary for the

American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...

. She edited the ''Journal of American Folklore'' from 1941 to 1946 and won the American Folklore Society's Chicago Book Prize in 1950. She was one of the original inductees into the Fellows of the American Folklore Society in 1960.

Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Research Project

At Indiana University, Wheeler-Voegelin also directed the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

Ohio Valley The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illinoi ...

Research Project from 1956 to 1969, the date of her retirement. The project was funded by the US Department of Justice and carried out research "to determine the locations and migrations of the indigenous inhabitants of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region during the period that Europeans first moved into the area". Wheeler-Voegelin supervised a team of three to five researchers who examined special collections in libraries across North America and Europe, collecting materials which concerned "any mention of American Indian land use and occupancy for the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley region". The information was used in cases taken before the

Indian Claims Commission The Indian Claims Commission was a judicial relations arbiter between the United States federal government and Native American tribes. It was established under the Indian Claims Act of 1946 by the United States Congress to hear any longstanding clai ...

. The research reports on tribes of the region are now housed at the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (formerly the

Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology The Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology (GBL) was an archaeology research center and museum located in Bloomington, Indiana. In 2020 the GBL was merged with the Mathers Museum of World Culture to become the new Indiana University Museum of Ar ...

, Erminie Wheeler Voegelin Archive) as the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Ethnohistory
GLOVE
collection at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana University and, with ...

Later life

Upon retirement, Wheeler-Voegelin moved to

Great Falls Great may refer to: Descriptions or measurements * Great, a relative measurement in physical space, see Size * Greatness, being divine, majestic, superior, majestic, or transcendent People * List of people known as "the Great" *Artel Great (born ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

, to live with her daughter and son-in-law. In the fall of 1985 she gave her

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

field notes and remaining professional books and papers to the

Newberry Library The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located on Washington Square in Chicago, Illinois. It has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics rela ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Wheeler-Voegelin died of

cardiac arrest Cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. It is a medical emergency that, without immediate medical intervention, will result in sudden cardiac death within minutes. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and possib ...

on July 10, 1988.

Legacy

In 1982, the American Society for Ethnohistory created its Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize for best book-length work in the field of

ethnohistory Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may n ...

Selected publications

* Kinietz, W. Vernon, Wheeler-Voegelin, Erminie (1939). ''Shawnese traditions: C.C. Trowbridge's account,''. Ann Arbor

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...

629653. * Voegelin, Charles Frederick; Voegelin, Erminie Wheeler (1944). ''Map of North American Indian languages''. New York. OCLC (identifier)">OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...