Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

44 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY
FIGURE 4.—^Jack's interest in Indians is already apparent in
this childhood picture of him and his brother.
anniversary events, a special convocation, scheduled
to coincide with the fall meetings of the
National Academy of Sciences and the American
Philosophical Society, was held in the Natural
History Building. On that occasion Matthew Stirling
gave an illustrated lecture on his work at the
Olmec site of La Venta in Mexico. I mention this
because Waldo spent a field season with Stirling
at La Venta in 1943.
Returning to Jack, it is evident from Figure 4
that he came by his interest in Indians at an early
age. Skipping to 1934, he participated that year
in a museum project of the Works Progress Administration.
Then from 1935 to 1940 he was
field curator in the National Park Service, and
from 1941 to 1944 was curator of the Museum of
the Plains Indians at Browning, Montana, an
important development of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. In one or other of these capacities prior
to entering military service he visited the National
Museum and met some of the anthropologists on
the staff, including Setzler. It was Jack's good
luck, therefore, when he saw his war service ending
and inquired about openings in the National
Museum, that Setzler happened to be casting
about for the third try at filling the vacancy
created by Collins' transfer. With the cooperation
of his wife. Marge, who had already come to
Washington, Jack landed the job.
Jack already had an impressive publication
record before beginning work in the Division of
Ethnology. As early as 1939, for instance, he had
published through the Stanford University Press
a book on Plains Indian paintings (Ewers, 1939).
Then between 1943 and 1945 he published in the
American Anthropologist three impressive papers
dealing with historic sources relating to cultural
practices of the Indian tribes of the Northern
Plains with special emphasis on the Blackfeet.
The subject matter of these publications indicates
that Jack, like Waldo, had settled on his research
career before coming to Washington. I judge,
therefore, that employment in the Smithsonian
initially attracted Jack because of the opportunity
it gave him to continue his already well-advanced
ethnographic studies of the Northern Plains
tribes.
Whether or not Jack knew that Setzler was
beginning to think about modernizing the anthropology
exhibits in the Natural History Building—exhibits
that had not been changed substantially
since the building was opened in 1911— I
have not learned. In any event, when the time