Archives West Finding Aid

Herbert J. Spinden (1879-1967) was a scholar of Anthropology and Ancient American Art. Spinden received his B.A. (1906), M.A. (1908), and Ph.D. (1909) in Anthropology at Harvard University. During his time at Harvard, Spinden conducted research and published on the Nez Perce Indians, although his primary interest was ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America. Among other appointments, Spinden worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, served as curator of the Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology for the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, curator of Anthropology at the Buffalo Museum of Arts and Sciences, and then curator of Ethnology at the Brooklyn Institute. While at the Brooklyn Institute (today the Brooklyn Museum), Spinden focused on collecting pre-Colombian Mexican, and South American indigenous art.

Willard Rhodes (1901-1992) was an Ethnomusicologist at Columbia University. Rhodes received his B.A. in Music from Wittenberg University, and M.A. from Columbia University in 1929, where he later returned to and served as a professor. Between 1940 and 1952, with the support of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Library of Congress, Rhodes recorded music from fifty American Indian groups in the West, including the Nez Perce, the Shoshone/Bannock, and the Navajo. This research can be found at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.