Frederica ("Freddy") Annis Lopez de Leo de Laguna (October 3, 1906 – October 6, 2004) was an American

ethnologist Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology) ...

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 ...

, and

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

influential for her work on Paleoindian and

Alaska Native art Alaska Native cultures are rich and diverse, and their art forms are representations of their history, skills, tradition, adaptation, and nearly twenty thousand years of continuous life in some of the most remote places on earth. These art forms a ...

and archaeology in the American northwest and Alaska. She founded and chaired the anthropology department at

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...

from 1938 to 1972 and served as vice-president of the

Society for American Archaeology The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is a professional association for the archaeology of the Americas. It was founded in 1934 and its headquarters are in based in Washington, D.C. , it has 7,500 members. Its current president is Deborah L. ...

(SAA) from 1949 to 1950 and as president of 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, ...

(AAA) from 1966 to 1967. De Laguna's honors include Bryn Mawr College's

Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching The Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award is given out by the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation. History Christian Lindback was the president and owner of Abbotts Dairies. He was also a trustee of Bucknell University. His foundation e ...

in 1972; her election into the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

as the first woman, with former classmate

Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard Co ...

, in 1975; the Distinguished Service Award from the AAA in 1986; a potlatch from the people of Yakutat in 1996; and the Lucy Wharton Drexel Medal from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1999.

Early life and education

De Laguna was born to Theodore Lopez de Leo de Laguna and Grace Mead (Andrus) de Laguna, philosophy professors at

, on October 3, 1906 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was home-schooled by her parents until age nine due to frequent illness. She joined her parents and younger brother Wallace on two sabbaticals during her childhood: Cambridge and Oxford, England in 1914–1915 and France in 1921–1922. De Laguna attended Bryn Mawr College on a scholarship from 1923 to 1927, graduating ''

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'' with a degree in politics and economics. Although she was awarded the college's European fellowship, she deferred for a year to study anthropology at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

under

Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...

Gladys Reichard Gladys Amanda Reichard (born 17 July 1893 at Bangor, Pennsylvania; died 25 July 1955 at Flagstaff, Arizona) was an American anthropologist and linguist. She is considered one of the most important women to have studied Native American languages a ...

, and

Ruth Benedict Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist. She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College, and graduated in 1909. After studying anthropology at the New School of Social Re ...

. In 1928, de Laguna traveled to England, France, and Spain, where she gained fieldwork experience under

George Grant MacCurdy George Grant MacCurdy (April 17, 1863 – November 15, 1947) was an American anthropologist, born at Warrensburg, Mo., where he graduated from the State Normal School in 1887, after which he attended Harvard (AB, 1893; AM, 1894); then studied in ...

, "attended lectures on prehistoric art by Abbe Breuil, and received guidance from

Paul Rivet Paul Rivet (7 May 1876, Wasigny, Ardennes – 21 March 1958) was a French ethnologist known for founding the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. In his professional work, Rivet is known for his theory that South America was originally populated in p ...

and

Marcellin Boule Pierre-Marcellin Boule (1 January 1861 – 4 July 1942), better known as merely Marcellin Boule, was a French palaeontologist, geologist, and anthropologist. Early life and education Pierre-Marcellin Boule was born in Montsalvy, France. Care ...

." In June 1929, de Laguna sailed to Greenland as

Therkel Mathiassen Therkel Mathiassen (5 September 1892, in Favrbo, Denmark – 14 March 1967) was an archaeologist, anthropologist, cartographer, and ethnographer notable for his scientific study of the Arctic. Mathiassen and Peter Freuchen took part in the Fift ...

's assistant on the country's "first scientific archaeological excavation." Staying a total of six months, the excavation convinced her of a future in anthropology and later became the subject of ''Voyage to Greenland: A Personal Initiation into Anthropology'' (1997). De Laguna received her PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in 1933.

Career

De Laguna's first funded expedition was to

Prince William Sound Prince William Sound (Sugpiaq: ''Suungaaciq'') is a sound of the Gulf of Alaska on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula. Its largest port is Valdez, at the southern terminus of the Tr ...

and

Cook Inlet Cook Inlet ( tfn, Tikahtnu; Sugpiaq: ''Cungaaciq'') stretches from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska. Cook Inlet branches into the Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at its northern end, almost surrounding Anchorage. On its sou ...

, Alaska, in 1930 after

Kaj Birket-Smith Kaj Birket-Smith (20 January 1893 – 28 October 1977) was a Danish philologist and anthropologist. He specialized in studying the habits and language of the Inuit and Eyak. He was a member of Knud Rasmussen's 1921 Thule expedition. In 1940, he ...

fell ill and was unable to continue with de Laguna as his research assistant. De Laguna instead secured funding from the

University of Pennsylvania Museum The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—commonly known as the Penn Museum—is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighb ...

and brought her brother Wallace, who was a geologist, as an assistant. The following year, the museum hired de Laguna to catalog their Eskimo collections and again financed two excavations to Cook Inlet in 1931 and 1932. She co-led an archaeological and ethnological expedition of Prince William Sound in 1933 with Birket-Smith; the trip became the basis for "The Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta, Alaska" (1938). De Laguna next explored the lower Yukon Valley and

Tanana River The Tanana River (Lower Tanana: Tth'eetoo', Upper Tanana: ''Tth’iitu’ Niign'') is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon (Athabaskan) ...

in 1935 and published two works because of it: ''Travels Among the Dena'' (1994) and ''Tales from the Dena'' (1997). Bryn Mawr College hired de Laguna as a sociology lecturer in 1938 "to teach the first ever anthropology course." She kept this position until 1942 when she took a leave of absence to serve in the naval reserve as a lieutenant commander of

Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service Waves most often refers to: *Waves, oscillations accompanied by a transfer of energy that travel through space or mass. * Wind waves, surface waves that occur on the free surface of bodies of water. Waves may also refer to: Music * Waves (ban ...

(WAVES). She taught naval history and codes and ciphers to women midshipmen at

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

until the war's end in 1945. She resumed her professorial duties at Bryn Mawr College and then returned to the Northern Tlingit region of Alaska in the 1950s, leading to her "comprehensive three-volume monograph...considered

o be O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), pl ...

the authoritative work on the Yakutat Tlingit." Although retired in 1975, de Laguna remained active in her profession through a trip to Upernavik, Greenland (resulting in the completion of George Thornton Emmons' ''The Tlingit Indians'' 991, volunteer work for the

U.S. Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency in ...

in Alaska, and the establishment of the Frederica de Laguna Northern Books Press. De Laguna also worked as an Associate Soil Conservationist in 1935 and 1936 on the Pima Indian Reservation, Arizona; as a teacher at an archaeological field school in 1941 under the sponsorship of Bryn Mawr College and the

Museum of Northern Arizona The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, that was established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist ...

; and as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1947 to 1949 and from 1972 to 1976 and at 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 ...

from 1959 to 1960 and from 1972 to 1973. Over 5,000 objects collected during her anthropological career are housed in the collections of the

Penn Museum The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—commonly known as the Penn Museum—is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighb ...

Selected works

* 1930
''The thousand march: Adventures of an American boy with the Garibaldi''
Boston: Little, Brown. OCL
3940490
* 1937
''The arrow points to murder''
Garden City, NJ: Crime Club, Inc. OCL
1720968
* 1938
''Fog on the mountain''
Homer, AK: Kachemak Country Publications. OCL
32748448
* 1972
''Under Mount Saint Elias: The history and culture of the Yakutat Tlingit: Part one''pdf
Smithsonian contributions to anthropology, v. 7. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. OCL
603795
* 1977
''Voyage to Greenland: A personal initiation in anthropology''
New York: Norton. OCL
2646088
* 1991, with George Thornton Emmons
''The Tlingit Indians''
New York: American Museum of Natural History. OCL
23463915
* 1994, with Norman Reynolds and Dale DeArmond
''Tales from the Dena: Indian stories from the Tanana, Koyukuk, and Yukon rivers''
Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. OCL
31518221
* 1997
''Travels among the Dena: Exploring Alaska's Yukon valley''
Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. OCL
42772476

References

External links

*
Frederica de Laguna Collection
from

Alaska State Library The Alaska State Library and Historical Collections and Talking Book Center are located on the second floor of the Andrew P. Kashevaroff Building in Juneau, Alaska. Mission statement The Alaska State Library: *promotes and coordinates library s ...

*
Frederica de Laguna collection
from Bryn Mawr College
Frederica de Laguna Northern Books
* "Papers of Frederica de Laguna" from

National Anthropological Archives The National Anthropological Archives is a collection of historical and contemporary documents maintained by the Smithsonian Institution, which document the history of anthropology and the world's peoples and cultures. It is located in the Smi ...

part 1
an
part 2

Video interview
with de Laguna from

George A. Smathers Libraries The George A. Smathers Libraries of the University of Florida constitute one of the largest university library systems in the United States. The system includes eight of the nine libraries of the University of Florida and provides primary support ...

William W. Fitzhugh, "Frederica de Laguna", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2013)
{{DEFAULTSORT:de Laguna, Frederica 1906 births 2004 deaths American women anthropologists American ethnologists Women ethnologists American expatriates in France American expatriates in the United Kingdom Bryn Mawr College alumni Bryn Mawr College faculty Columbia University alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences People from Ann Arbor, Michigan Female United States Navy officers 20th-century American women scientists American women archaeologists 20th-century women writers University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology American mystery writers American crime fiction writers WAVES personnel 20th-century American archaeologists 20th-century American anthropologists American women academics Historians from Michigan 21st-century American women Military personnel from Michigan