Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 30 41
phase of the game of musical chairs that goes on
all the time in the Smithsonian. But this phase
was a bit different. Dr. Walter Hough, a longtime
head curator of anthropology, had died a
year earlier, in September 1935. Normally, he
would have been succeeded by one of the three
curators under him. In order of seniority, this
would have been either Ales Hrdlicka in physical
anthropology, Neil Judd in archeology, or Herbert
Krieger in ethnology. As it happened, however,
these three were not on speaking terms with
one another. Faced with this situation, Alexander
Wetmore, then director of the National IVIuseum,
reached down to the next level in the hierarchy
and picked Frank Setzler, Judd's assistant curator,
to be acting head curator. But more of this
later.
It was the vacancy created by the shift within
the Department of Anthropology that Waldo had
been picked to fill. The following facts suggest
that his selection was not by chance. Duncan
Strong, under whom Waldo had studied archeology
at Nebraska and under whom he had done
fieldwork in the Plains, had joined the staff of the
Bureau of American Ethnology five years earlier.
Also, Waldo had gone from the University of
Nebraska to the University of California at Berkeley
to take his doctorate, and the latter place is
where Strong had taken his doctorate. lUoreover,
the Bureau was just publishing a monograph by
Waldo on Pawnee archeology (Wedel, 1936). All
of this means, it seems to me, that Waldo had a
great advantage over other candidates (if any) for
the position.
By 1936, Neil Judd, Waldo's chief, had almost
completely given up fieldwork, the last of which
had centered on Chaco Canyon in New IVIexico.
Instead, he was devoting much of his time to
housekeeping chores in his Division, and especially
to the accessioning of the vast collections
resulting from Civil Works Administration and
Works Progress Administration archeological
projects—those ingenious devices of the Roosevelt
administration for giving people employment
while the economy was returning to normal.
Thus, although Waldo was expected to assume
his portion of the curatorial workload, to attend
to some of the visitors, and to answer certain
letters from the public, he did not have to compete
with Judd for fieldwork opportunities.
In fact, Waldo was presented with opportunities
for fieldwork almost immediately. One of the
least of these was a salvage job in physical anthropology.
Two Indian ossuaries had been exposed
during the grading of a runway at Boiling
Air Force Base across the Anacostia River from
Washington, and, in September 1936, Waldo and
I spent a weekend removing the bones (Stewart
and Wedel, 1937). At the time, I hoped that this
trip to the Maryland side of the river might
arouse Waldo's interest in eastern archeology, but
nothing much came of it. His only activities in
this direction, so far as my knowledge goes, consisted
of occasional weekend visits to sites up the
Potomac River with some of the local amateurs.
Once later, when I had occasion to take him over
to Rehoboth, Delaware, to a meeting of the Sussex
County Archeological Society, I realized, as
Figure 2 shows, that Waldo was content to assume
the pose of an onlooker, so far as fieldwork in the
East was concerned.
Subsequent events confirm that Waldo was not
about to be distracted from the career in Plains
archeology that he had embarked upon. His first
field trip back to the Plains under Smithsonian
auspices began in May 1937, just nine months
after the date of his appointment. One reason for
this prompt return to the Plains and the many
repeats since then was a succession of exciting
finds. Figure 3 offers an example of one of these
finds. It shows Waldo and George Metcalf, his
long-time friend, looking in awe at something
they have uncovered and probably muttering
"What in hell is it?"
Encouragement to pursue fieldwork was not
the only attraction that the Smithsonian had to
offer Waldo. At the conclusion of his 1937 field
season, he summarized the results of that season
in a volume of the Institution's series devoted to
exploration and fieldwork (Wedel, 1938a). At the
same time the Proceedings of the United States National
Museum (Wedel, 1938b) carried his account
of one of the sites explored during the 1937 field
season. The availability of such widely distributed