Reflections on Regina Flannery's Career

LUCY M. COHEN The Catholic University of America

I am honored by your invitation to share reflections with you about Regina Flannery. She always looked forward to the Algonquian Confer­ ences and, indeed, she was here in Ottawa at the 1988 Conference. On a number of occasions I have asked what was life like for our pioneering women who opened the doors of universities for other women, and distinguished themselves by their contributions to knowledge. Permit me to share some reflections about our esteemed colleague, Regina Flan­ nery, a woman in the vanguard of anthropology. My reflections are based on material from Flannery's accounts and papers, on selected aspects of her anthropological research, her academic life at the Catholic University of America, and my personal experiences as her former student, col­ league, and friend. In 1904, the year that Regina Flannery was born, her father Martin Markham Flannery, an attorney, became the director of trade practice con­ ferences for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington; in 1922 he was described as "one of the great prosecutors of his generation" for his "demonstrated ability, fearlessness and devotion to principle" (Anon. 1922:8). Her mother, Regina Fowler, came from an old family on the east- em shore of ; the Fowlers were . Flannery attended Holy Cross Academy, a Catholic school for girls in Washington, graduating in 1923. She cited her teachers there - particu­ larly those who inspired her love of Latin and English literature - as pre­ eminent influences in her life (Marinucci 1999). At Trinity College, a Catholic institution for young women close to the Catholic University of America (cf. Mullaly 1987), she majored in Latin and History and gradu­ ated in 1927. Throughout her life she valued these studies, noting that in addition to her classical education she had learned practical skills such as

1. Regina had two older brothers, Markham and Cyril, and a younger sister, Elizabeth. (Telephone conversation between Regina Flannery's first cousin, Estelle Achstetter, and Lucy M. Cohen, 2005; see also Bryant 1995).

Actes du 37e Congres des Algonquinistes, sous la dir. de H.C. Wolfart (Winnipeg: Universite du Manitoba, 2006), pp. 375-389. 376 LUCY M. COHEN

Gregg shorthand, which became a useful tool for gathering the detailed notes which characterized her ethnological fieldrecords . She then passed the Department of State Spanish language examina­ tion with distinction, but instead of pursuing a career in the Department of State, Flannery accepted Dr. John M. Cooper's invitation to serve as his research assistant in a national study of Programs and Policies in Catholic Children's Institutions; she worked with the project from 1927 to 1931. In the final report, Cooper (1931 :xxiv) commented that Regina Flannery had "committed a large share of responsibility" to this study, from the begin­ ning to the end. She had, in addition, written the chapter on 'Plant and Equipment' (pp. 633-673) in the institutions. Father Cooper (1881-1949), her mentor and colleague, personifies the intellectual milieu within which Regina Flannery discovered anthro­ pology and, particularly, the Algonquian-speaking peoples. Born and edu­ cated in Maryland, he completed his Ph.D. at the American College in Rome in 1902 and the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1905, the year in which he was ordained a secular priest. While in Europe, he trav­ eled widely and developed a strong interest in archeology and in art. Flannery (1950:64) described Father Cooper as a "tremendous worker," stressing that "[His] ... self imposed schedule ... seemed to be one factor in his more than ordinary accomplishments in several different fields ..." She further noted: "Fortunately for his anthropological career ... Father Cooper chose to spend his vacations on camping trips in Can­ ada and became an expert canoeist; but, more important, he became inter­ ested in his Indian guides and their way of life" (1950:65). Thus, the foundation was laid for the systematic ethnological investigations. With his original interest in archaeology and his scientific curiosity about living Indian peoples, Cooper was drawn to the Smithsonian Insti­ tution, where he was encouraged by such scientists as Frederick W. Hodge, John Reed Swanton, and Ales Hrdlicka. According to Flannery his firstseriou s publication in anthropology was the Analytical and criti­ cal bibliography of the tribes ofTierra del Fuego and adjacent territory (1917). As she put it, "The same detailed, thorough and painstaking searching of source materials is as evident in this publication as it is in his many contributions to the Handbook of South American Indians written three decades later" (Flannery 1950:65).2 In addition to his research in anthropology, he was instructor in religious education at Catholic Univer- REFLECTIONS ON REGINA FLANNERY'S CAREER 377

sity of America. In 1923, he was invited to teach anthropology in the Department of Sociology there, and in 1928 he was promoted to a full professorship in Anthropology (Flannery 1950:65; cf. also Sloyan 1997). During her years as a research assistant with the children's institu­ tions project, Flannery met many well-known anthropologists who visited Cooper, and audited courses in anthropology. The Rector at the time, James Hugh Ryan, encouraged her to take courses for credit, and by 1931 she had completed her course requirements for the M.A. (Flannery 1931). As a student, Flannery belonged to the first cohort of lay women admitted to graduate study at Catholic University. Although their admis­ sion had been considered at the time of the founding of the university in 1889, the motion had been postponed and instead, in 1897, the founders looked at the newly established Trinity College nearby as the institution which would extend higher education to women. The attendance of nuns at Catholic University began in 1911 but it was limited to the Summer School, in facilities which were separate from the main campus. Most were members of religious communities throughout the country and abroad. Not until 1929 were lay women admitted as graduate students, with the Academic Senate expressing the hope that at least "forty women students would attend the courses in the new academic year" (Cohen 1990:12). In 1931, Flannery applied to the summer training program in anthro­ pological fieldmethod s sponsored by the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe, New Mexico, and for a scholarship "to enable properly quali­ fied graduate students to supplement, by practical work in the field, the classroom and laboratory instruction which they receive at the universi­ ties ... Recipients of scholarships (are) to take part in the current investi­ gations of experienced research men ..."3 Actually, in the summer of 1931 the Scholars in Ethnology worked under the direction of Ruth F. Benedict of Columbia University, with Harry Hoijer as consultant on

2. Flannery thought highly of Cooper's (1950:65) publications on South America: "Although he himself never managed to get in any first-hand fieldwor k on that continent, he was one of the authorities on South American ethnology, and his fourfold classification of Indian cultures there was adopted as a basis of organization for the Handbook" 3. Announcement of Scholarships for Training in Anthropological Field-Method by the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe (1931); (Mescalero Apachefile, Regina Flannery papers, Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of America). 378 LUCY M. COHEN

Athapaskan languages. was the Chairman of the Scholarship Committee,4 and her fellow trainees were Sol Tax, Morris E. Opler, Jules Henry, Paul Frank and John Gillin. The summer was spent among the Mescalero Apache, and Ella Sampson served as her interpreter. At the end of the fieldtraining , wrote to to express her satisfaction with the progress of her students: "The results would be creditable to any group of ethnologists, and I'm satisfied that the boys have really learned something in the process." Lumped with the "boys," Flannery found her ethnographic work, which included the tran­ scription of stories and accounts of myths, well appreciated by her mentor and her fellow students, particularly Morris E. Opler and Jules Henry.6 She prepared a 150 page report, 'Folklore of the Mescalero Apache,' which was drawn upon by Opler (1942:vii) in his work on Apache litera­ ture. Flannery's rapport with her Mescalero Apache respondents was con­ firmed by a letter to her from Ella Sampson, her interpreter, commenting on the good relations she had established with her two elderly women informants. One of the women had asked Ms. Sampson to tell Regina that they guessed that upon her return home, she would be "sitting down ... smoking ..." During her field work she always offered her elderly infor­ mants a "smoke," a characteristic by which she would be remembered throughout her life. Ella also invited Regina to come back again some day, assuring her that "the old lady will tell you some more stories" and asking her to "kindly send a copy of the story you took from the old lady."7 Flannery's firstpublicatio n in anthropology, 'The position of women among the Mescalero Apache,' published in Primitive Man (1932), high-

4. Letter from Sapir to Flannery, Chicago, 2 April 1931 (Mescalero Apachefile, Regin a Flannery papers, Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of America). 5. Letter from Benedict to Boas, 24 August 1931 (Franz Boas papers, quoted in Modell 1983:179). 6. Letters from Opler to Flannery, Chicago, 27 October 1931, and from Flannery to Opler, Washington, 11 November 1931 (Mescalero Apachefile, Regin a Flannery papers, Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of America). 7. Letter from Sampson to Flannery, Mescalero, New Mexico, 28 September 1931 Mescalero Apachefile, Regin a Flannery papers, Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of America). REFLECTIONS ON REGINA FLANNERY'S CAREER 379 lighted characteristics of the social life of the women, although she emphasized that during fieldwor k "her lot had been to gather myths and folk tales so that much of the material here presented was obtained inci­ dentally." She had written about women because "I had a woman inter­ preter most of the nine weeks we were there and as I took about half of my stories from women informants, I was among women the greater part of the time and had a good opportunity of observing them at close range" (1932:26-27). She also wrote a paper, 'Field work in anthropology,' for the Alumnae Journal of Trinity College (1932). Following her return to Catholic University to pursue her studies towards the Ph.D. in the academic year 1933-34, she became an Assistant in Anthropology in the Sociology Department and taught two courses each semester. She thus became the first woman to teach a course in the School of Arts and Sciences and the first lay woman faculty member at Catholic University. In 1934, the Department of Anthropology was cre­ ated with Father Cooper as Head. She was appointed an Instructor in 1935, and in 1938 she completed her Ph.D. Her dissertation, 'An analysis of coastal Algonquian culture' (1939), tested the possibilities of the ana­ lytic method for spatial and temporal reconstruction from ethnological data. This work continues to be an important reference for archaeologists as well as ethnologists. During the 1930s, Flannery spent the summers in field work. In 1933, she visited Moose Factory for the firsttime , with the task of inter­ viewing Cree women on the "old ways." This fieldwor k was sponsored, in part, by a grant from the Social Science Research Council. She carried out additional research in 1935 and 1937, and in the summer of 1938, as a recent Ph.D. graduate in anthropology and bride of a week, Regina returned to the Cree, accompanied by her husband, Karl F. Herzfeld, a theoretical .8 Upon her return from the 1938 field trip, Flannery was forced to accept an appointment as a Research Associate at no pay because the new

8. Karl F. Herzfeld (1892-1978) studied and in (1910-1914), where he was born, spending a year at Zurich in 1912-13. He was drafted and served in combat in the Austrian army until 1918. In 1926 he was offered the firstSpeye r Visiting Professorship at , and at the end of the semester accepted a per­ manent position as a full professor of theoretical physics. In 1936 he left Johns Hopkins to join the Department of Physics at Catholic University of America (Mulligan 2001, Johnson 1990). 380 LUCY M. COHEN

Rector, Joseph Corrigan, did not wish to have married women appointed to the faculties; when he was replaced six years later (in 1944), she was reappointed as an Assistant Professor. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1948, and to the rank of Ordinary Professor in 1952 (Gardner 1990:94). By the time she completed her Ph.D. in anthropology in 1938, Flan­ nery had published eight papers. Most were based on her field work among the Cree and Montagnais of James Bay, and dealt with subjects which she discussed with colleagues in the field. For example, in October 1936, when she published the article 'Some aspects of James Bay recre­ ative culture,' she drew on the data gathered during the summers of 1933 and 1935 at Moose Factory, with a focus in children's games as well as the extent to which adults indulged in children's play, and games played only by adults. Almost 30 years later, Margaret Mead (1975) contributed an article to a special issue of the Anthropological Quarterly in honor of Flannery. In her introduction, she wrote that she had chosen play as a topic of her paper "because my first conversation about theory with Regina Flannery was about methods of studying primitive children, espe­ cially primitive children at play." Mead further wrote: "I had already begun my field studies of children when Dr. John Cooper asked me if I would discuss methods with her" (1975:157). Mead's interest in Flan­ nery's work with children had also led her to suggest Flannery as a candi­ date to collect "as full a bibliography as possible" upon the subject of methods for studying primitive children, as part of the 1940 initiative by the National Research Council Committee on Personality and Culture.9 In the 1930s and 1940s Flannery also published work in which she applied her store of anthropological knowledge to current issues (e.g., Flannery 1945, 1946a, 1951, 1953a). In the fall of 1936, for example, she was invited to attend the second biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, joining a group of social psychologists and sociologists in a program on the subject of 'The Social and Cultural Environment of the Child.' In her introduction she observed that her per­ sonal field work, "while conducted in the main along traditional ethnolog- lcal lines," had brought her into some contact with certain phases of child

9. Letter from Mead to Cooper, American Museum of Natural History, 3 April 1940; meSt Bea ehole t0 Re Flann ^ g' gina Flannery Herzfeld, 16 April 1940 (Regina Flannery papers, Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of America) REFLECTIONS ON REGINA FLANNERY'S CAREER 381 development, inasmuch as her more "particular ethnological interest in the field has been with the child and the woman." She chose three aspects of child life among the Eastern Cree of James Bay for discussion: "the sense of responsibility and self-reliance, the nonaggressive, noncompeti­ tive, sharing attitude, and the absence of conflict at adolescence." Flan­ nery highlighted processes through which child behavior is brought about and concluded (1937): "from the evidence we are safe in saying they are the results of cultural factors and processes; that is, not of racial or psy­ chological factors and processes." Flannery's work among the Algonquian-speaking Gros Ventres began in 1940 when she was invited to the Fort Belknap Reservation in north-central Montana to work with the women. Cooper had visited the reservation in 1938, 1939, and 1940, where older men "wanted a record of this old way of life taken down" (Flannery 1953b:xi). As was custom­ ary in her research, she outlined the circumstances which had led to her specific focus (Flannery 1953b:xii): I was invited to the Reservation in 1940 to work exclusively with the women and to deal mainly with matters other than religion. The two oldest women at Hays, Coming Daylight and Singer, accepted me as their "granddaughter" which was fortunate in view of the freedom allowed between grandparents and grandchildren in Gros Ventre soci­ ety. Although these two old women did not speak English, I was happy in having as interpreters women who were well liked by them and who were themselves interested in "the old ways of doing things." Flannery points out that pressures of other duties, combined with ill- health, prevented Cooper's return to the field after 1940, but she contin­ ued fieldwor k in the summers of 1945 and 1948. Her work, The Gros Ventres of Montana, Part I: Social life, was published in 1953. The sec­ ond volume, Cooper's The Gros Ventres of Montana, Part II: Religion and ritual, was almost completed by the time of his death in 1949. Flan­ nery edited this volume, adding information obtained in 1948 in footnotes identified as her own (Cooper 1957). In the context of the 1930s and 1940s, interest in the relations between the concepts of personality and the study of cultures was emerg­ ing among anthropologists and colleagues in other fields.I n the early 1930s, Edward Sapir, among others, called for a study of individuals in cultures (see Mandelbaum 1962) while John Dollard in Criteria for a life history had wondered what might happen to our conventional ethnograph- 382 LUCY M. COHEN ical view if a large number of autobiographies of Native peoples were col­ lected. In his words, "It could not fail to result in a great enrichment of our view of other cultures ..." (1935:262). In her article 'Configurations of culture in North America,' Ruth Benedict discussed ways in which con­ figurations in culture patterned the emotional and cognitive reactions of its carriers so that each specialized in selected types of behavior, and ruled out the "behavior proper to its opposite" (1932). Drawing on her field work among the Gros Ventre, Flannery pro­ posed a nuanced interpretation of personality and culture. In her paper 'Individual variation in culture', which Flannery presented at the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (1956), she outlined in detail the behavior of Coming Daylight, her Gros Ventre informant, contrasting it with that of others of approximately the same age. All had participated as adults in the old way of life before the disappearance of the buffalo in 1887. Flannery's focus in this paper was to examine Ruth Benedict's depiction of the dominant "Dionysian configu­ rations of Plains culture" in light of ethnographic accounts. Benedict had described the patterns of Plains culture as those in which expression of emotional excess and dangerous experience were expected. Flannery (1960:87) asked: "If the aspect of personality thus revealed runs counter to a dominant trend of his culture, is the individual a misfit in that soci­ ety?" Drawing on the example of her Gros Ventre key informant, she wrote: "Coming Daylight was what her contemporaries considered fortu­ nate in having been offered curing powers of several kinds" (1960:87). However, as a child, Coming Daylight had developed (1960:89) a very strong set against violence, and against painful and dangerous experiences. She also refused medicine power from supernatural sources not only because it was dangerous but also because it involved a kind of physical activity which was repugnant to her ... Her actual deviations from the patterns of accepted or approved behavior all tended in this same direction against violence. Flannery then contrasted the behavior of Coming Daylight with that of Woman Chief, known as a very brave person who had risked her life in battle and performed other admired feats in war. She concluded (1960:91) that, "insofar as the patterns of Dionysian configuration were the basis for comparison, the behavior of both women exhibited opposite extremes ... Both might be termed deviant personalities. Nevertheless, neither seems REFLECTIONS ON REGINA FLANNERY'S CAREER 383 to have been a misfit insofar as each represented an extreme of socially accepted or sanctioned behavior within those patterns." I highlight this lit­ tle-known article to illustrate Flannery's careful field-basedethnographi c work. Hers was not based on ideal type depictions of individuals in cul­ tures. She crafted her critique of Ruth Benedict, her mentor, with artful diplomacy and based on rich accounts about the respondents involved. From the 1940s through the 1960s, Flannery was also active in pro­ fessional and learned societies, serving as Secretary of the American Anthropological Association from 1943-1947; President of the Anthropo­ logical Society of Washington from 1946-1948; Vice-President of the American Folklore Society, 1951. Her 1946 paper 'The ACLS and anthro­ pology' showed her clear grasp of the development of scholarship and research in anthropology and its relation to the humanities and social sci­ ences in the . She was elected a Member of the Washington Academy of Science in 1941 and served as its Vice-President in 1960. In her nomination for election to membership in this Academy, recognition was given to her research on the northeastern and eastern Algonquian peoples. She was active in the Catholic Association for International Peace, and at its beginning she was the only woman elected to member­ ship in the Catholic Commission on Cultural and Intellectual Affairs. Regina was appointed Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Catholic University in 1953, following the death of Cornelius Connelly, physical anthropologist, who had succeeded Cooper in 1949. She remained in that position until 1969, during a period of major growth of the Department. She continued to carry a full load of courses and the direction of some 22 M.A. theses and 12 Ph.D. dissertations (and served as reader on at least 16 other dissertations). She was a witness to and a participant in the development of one of the early graduate anthropology departments in the U.S. Anthropologists and interested scholars from the U.S. and overseas were frequent lecturers and visitors there. Jasper Ingersoll recalled (personal communication, 2005) his impressions of Regina when he first joined the Department in 1967: "She seemed very unassuming and effortlessly gracious ... [She] was very open to change in the department in a time of academic growth ... Regina was committed to the comprehensive vision of the four fields of anthro­ pology: cultural, linguistic, archeological, and physical. Unable to hire regular staff in all four fields, she juggled exchanges with other local uni- 384 LUCY M. COHEN versities and adjunct lecturers to have all four perspectives offered to our students." As Editor of the Anthropological Quarterly from 1949 to 1963, her writing skills were well-recognized by colleagues and students whose work she reviewed generously. The Department attracted a diverse group of graduate students, many of whom came with national and international work experience. Her former students always admired the genuine inter­ est she had in research which addressed wide-ranging peoples and prob­ lems. She maintained a personal interest in the graduates and their work long after they had completed their studies. As Carl A. Dutto, alumnus of the Department, wrote (personal communication, 2005): "Regina was a true friend, who followed me and my family in every step of life's ven­ tures ... She showed a strong interest in my work in international devel­ opment. Whether we were talking about Indonesia or Nepal, Washington or Guatemala, Jordan or Egypt or East Timor ... her interest was keen, her knowledge of local situations and political trends was deep, and her con­ cerns for a better lot and a just share for the local populations were always forceful." When she became Professor Emerita in 1971, the University's Pro­ vost extended his best wishes for what he knew would be an active retire­ ment. It was a full retirement, indeed. She maintained her office in the Department for the rest of her life. For most of this period, faculty and students witnessed her active professional activity. Phyllis Chock, past Chair of the Department, noted in 1981: "As a colleague, Dr. Herzfeld has always been generous, untiring, and modest, with a special concern for young scholars, whose research she has encouraged and fostered. Alumni, young and old, lay and religious, look to her as a standard of scholarship and service." I was a frequent witness to the visits from diverse persons. Native Americans sought specialized information based on her research and her excellent memory while specialists of Algonquian-speaking peo­ ples sought her counsel on details about cultural, archaeological and lin­ guistic materials.

10 Letter to Regina Flannery Herzfeld from Joseph Neusse, Provost, Catholic University of America, 18 May 1971 (Regina Flannery papers, Department of Anthropology, Catho­ lic University of America). [L Letter to the Alumni Awards Committee, Catholic University of America, 7 May REFLECTIONS ON REGINA FLANNERY'S CAREER 385

Throughout her career she was recognized by the peoples she had studied, as well as other institutions. The Gros Ventres (White Clay Peo­ ple) adopted her into the tribe in a Naming Ceremony in 1945 and named her Ithenakya 'Woman Chief. In 1975, she was invited to a symposium at Hays (on the Fort Belknap Reservation), on the integration of tradi­ tional Gros Ventre materials into the school curriculum of the reservation. There she was honored at a special powwow, and the Tribal Council at its own expense reprinted the publications which she and Cooper had pre­ pared on the ways of life of the Gros Ventres (Gardner 1990:91). In 1967, Trinity College, her alma mater, awarded her the degree Doctor of Science honoris causa: "Internationally known for her research on the American Indian, Dr. Herzfeld has been active in all the relevant learned societies ... Respected for her scholarship, at once creative and meticulous, admired for her devotion to the whole human family." The Catholic University Alumnae also recognized her contributions to research at its Annual Alumnae banquet in 1986. In 1978, when Karl Herzfeld died, Flannery was 74 years old. In the years that followed, she returned to her research and asked me to findhe r an assistant. We were fortunate to have Mary Elizabeth Chambers, a grad­ uate student in Meso-American archaeology, join her in this work. Beth Chambers (personal communication, 2005) captures the richness of this phase in Regina's career: I first came to know Regina in the early 1980s when I was a graduate student in archaeology looking for a part-time job. Dr. Cohen said to me, "Let me introduce you to our emerita professor, Regina Flannery Herzfeld. She was a contemporary of Margaret Mead and Ruth Bene­ dict, you know." That sparked my interest immediately and then when we talked, I knew it would be a fascinating experience to work with her. We were to meet once a week or so to work with her ethnographic materials from fieldwork in the 1930s and 1940s among the East Cree of James Bay, . These materials had been put aside while Regina was Department chair and carrying a full load of teaching, and while she cared for her ailing husband, and now she was eager to return to them. We worked together, off and on, over some 15 years, publishing sev­ eral articles and preparing all of Father Cooper's and Regina's ethno­ graphic materials - fieldnotes , manuscripts, photographs, recordings, artifacts - for transfer to the CU archives. Our collaboration culminated in 1995 with the publication of Regina's biography of Ellen Smallboy, who some fiftyyear s before had been 386 LUCY M. COHEN

Regina's main respondent at Moose Factory ... The idea for the book came during a return visit we made to Moose Factory in 1985 together with Professor Bill Gardner and his wife, Joan Walker ... The high­ light of her visit was to meet again with her old friend and interpreter, Ruby McLeod, who was still living at Moose Factory. In bringing my comments to a close, I would like to reflect on the meaning of the last phase of life for Regina Flannery, who died two weeks before her 100th birthday. As a long-time smoker, she may have baffled epidemiologists who offer predictions about life styles and length of human life. While her eyesight suffered from the effects of macular degeneration, she compensated for this partial blindness with the help of a reading machine and the assistance of friends and colleagues. Perhaps her field work, conducted among older respondents when she was a younger woman, gave her insights on her own position as the wise woman whose role now was to ensure that the "old ways" would not be forgotten. Regina Flannery's best-known work focussed on the lives of the old­ est members of their respective nations, who were recognized for their wisdom as well as their memory of events of the past. Ellen Smallboy was born in 1853 and died in 1941, when she was 88 years old. Regina Flan­ nery firstme t her in 1933, when Ellen was about 80 years old (Flannery 1995:ix-xii). Coming Daylight of the Gros Ventre Nation, who was bom in 1854, died in 1949, when she was 95 years old. Regina met her in 1940, when Coming Daylight was about 86 years old (Flannery 1953b:214- 215). Flannery's observations about Ellen Smallboy and Coming Daylight showed that she understood the challenges of advanced age and clearly identified the strengths these individuals can and do bring to their cul­ tures. I suggest that during the last twenty years of her life, Regina experi­ enced a "coming of age," to use Margaret Mead's expression. Just as she had approached her best-known older informants with full confidence in their capacities, she emerged with intellectual fortitude and a commitment to share her knowledge of the "old ways." In the 1930s and 1940s, an interdisciplinary group of scholars, responding to the challenges posed by Edward Sapir (Mandelbaum 1962) and John Dollard (1935), examined the use of personal documents in his­ tory, anthropology and sociology. Clyde Kluckhohn (1945), writing about the experiences of anthropologists, discussed biographies, autobiogra­ phies and life histories. He wrote that the challenge for anthropologists REFLECTIONS ON REGINA FLANNERY'S CAREER 387 began with face-to-face relationships, often with persons who spoke an alien language. There were cultural adjustments as well. Later, Jan Van- sina (1965) and Ruth Finnegan (1992), among others, discussed the con­ cept of oral tradition, offering analyses and guides for the conduct of such research and pointing to comparisons and contrasts between the concepts of oral tradition and oral history. The challenge for Flannery in this respect was to draw on records she had gathered half a century earlier and to prepare accounts which incorpo­ rated the context, as she had known it, in those earlier years. Laura Peers commented recently that one of the aspects of Flannery's work which impressed her was not only her detailed field notes but also "her ability to recall mood and context for her interviews with Ellen [Smallboy] in the 1930s" (personal communication, 2004). It is this linkage between the gathering of records of the past and the interpretation of experience which in my judgment contributed to Flannery's success in bringing to life the "old ways." Flannery's qualities as a person which those of us who knew her will never forget are best summarized by the anthropologist Eileen Kane (writing from Ireland; personal communication, 2004): "We will always remember Regina with her formidable intellect, her sense of adventure, her humor, and the fact that she seemed to be game for anything. When a wonderful Irish person dies, they say here, 'We won't see her likes again,' and it is true."

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