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Jane Richardson Hanks Kiowa papers

 Collection
Identifier: Ayer-Modern-MS-Hanks

Scope and Content of the Collection

Correspondence, field notes (including sound recordings of Kiowa songs), and writings of Jane Richardson Hanks, mainly documenting her 1935 graduate ethnological field work with the Kiowa Indians in Oklahoma, but also a Kiowa Pow Wow in 1968. Also field notes, writings, and correspondence of Alexander Lesser, Weston LaBarre, Donald Collier, William Bascom, and Bernard Mishkin; and slides and motion pictures of the 1968 Pow Wow.

Dates

  • Creation: 1935-1968
  • Creation: Majority of material found within 1935-1940

Creator

Language

Materials are in English.

Conditions Governing Access

The Jane Richardson Hanks Kiowa papers are open for research in the Special Collections Reading Room; 1 box at a time (Priority III).

Audiovisual recordings in this collection have been digitized and are available online. Access to the original audiovisual items is restricted.

Ownership and Literary Rights

The Jane Richardson Hanks Kiowa papers are the physical property of the Newberry Library. Copyright may belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For permission to publish or reproduce any materials from this collection, contact the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections at reference@newberry.org.

Biography of Jane Richardson Hanks

Anthropologist; student of the Kiowa and Blackfoot Indians, and of the people of Thailand.

Jane Richardson was born on August 2, 1908, in Berkeley, California, where she grew up in a University affiliated family, exposed to a wide variety of subjects, people, and countries. As a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, working with anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, Jane Richardson was selected to participate in a field expedition to study the Kiowa in Oklahoma during the summer of 1935. Sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe and led by Columbia University professor Alexander Lesser, Richardson joined four other graduate students on the expedition: Weston La Barre (Yale), Donald Collier (University of Chicago), William Bascom (Northwestern), and Bernard Mishkin (Columbia). She returned to Berkeley for two more years of graduate work and then headed to Columbia University where she wrote her dissertation on Kiowa law under Ruth Benedict. The dissertation was published in 1940 as "Law and Status Among the Kiowa Indians" in the Monographs of the American Ethnological Society, no. 1.

Richardson joined psychologist Abraham Maslow as a research assistant in 1938 to study the Blackfoot Indians. There she met another psychologist, Lucien M. Hanks, Jr., whom she subsequently married. The Hanks had three children and lived their lives at Bennington College in Vermont, and in Thailand, the subject of the remainder of Jane Richardson Hanks' published work. She resides in Bennington, Vermont.

Extent

1.6 Linear Feet (4 boxes)

0.4 Linear Feet : 5 reel to reel tapes, 1 video reel, and 1 DVD

Abstract

Correspondence, field notes, and writings of anthropologist Jane Richardson Hanks, mainly documenting her 1935 graduate student field work with the Kiowa Indians in Oklahoma.

Organization

Papers are organized in the following series:

Series 1: Correspondence, 1935-1968
Box 1
Series 2: Field Work, 1935-1968
Boxes 1-3, 7
Series 3: Writings, 1935-approximately 1940
Box 7

Location

3a 55 11

Provenance

Gift of Jane Richardson Hanks, February, 1994.

Processed by

Lisa Oppenheim, May, 1999.

Title
Inventory of the Jane Richardson Hanks Kiowa papers, 1935-1968, bulk 1935-1940
Status
Completed
Author
Lisa Oppenheim
Date
©2004.
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Revision Statements

  • 2023-02-28: Audiovisual recordings in this collection have been digitized and are available online. Access to the original audiovisual items is restricted. Boxes 4, 5, and 6 removed from collection.

Repository Details

Part of the The Newberry Library - Modern Manuscripts and Archives Repository

Contact:
60 West Walton Street
Chicago Illinois 60610 United States
312-255-3512