Archives West Finding Aid

Professor of anthrolopogy, University of Washington, linguist, author.

At his death, 1965, Ralph Roys was perhaps the greatest gringo scholar of the Maya. The son of a Polish immigrant, he was born in Greenville, Michigan in 1879. A Mayan scholar from youth onward, he graduated from the University of Michigan in 1900 with a Ph.B. in medieval French. With a natural flair for languages, he commanded also German, Spanish and Polish. He learned Russian on his own, and served in the Diplomatic Corps during World War I. What began as a casual meeting with the curator of the Peabody Museum as a youth blossomed into an intellectual fluency with colonial and contemporary Mayan life. His primary interest was always linguistics, but he shows a keen perception and ability to integrate archaeology and aspects of social life into an all-enveloping mosaic. Roys' first major work was written while working under Gates at Tulane,"The Ethnobotany of the Mayas," 1931. Whitman College conferred the title of Litt. Hum. D. upon him, and he was until his death Wade Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington. Shortly before his death he published the work which was the culmination of his art, "The Ritual of the Bacabs," the mastering of Mayan syllabication and grammar. Roys' greatest honor came to home just before his death when he received an LL.D. from the University of Yucatan.