Ezell, Paul H. (Paul Howard), 1913-1988

American author.

Anthropologist and educator; expert witness for the Pima and Maricopa Indians on their land and water claims against the U.S. government.

Paul Howard Ezell was born 12 August 1913 on a homestead in Carbon County, Wyoming and moved west to Davis, California, with his parents around 1925. From Davis, he came to the University of Arizona, where he obtained his master's degree in archaeology in 1939 and his PhD. in 1956. His dissertation, The Hispanic Acculturation of the Gila River Pimas, was published in 1961 as Memoir no. 90 of the American Anthropological Association ( American Anthropologist, vol. 63, no. 5, part 2).

For a time, Ezell was field foreman on a W.P.A. archaeology project in North Carolina, but in 1941, he was accepted into the Immigration Border Patrol at El Paso, Texas. In 1943, he entered the Navy as a gunnery officer, returning to the Border Patrol in Ajo, Arizona, after his stint. There, he used his time to note the occurrence of archaeological sites.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ezell worked for the Pima-Maricopa Indian tribe and served as an expert witness, testifying before the Indian Claims Commission in behalf of land claims made by the tribe against the United States government. Toward that end, he examined virtually all of the available material concerning the Pima-Maricopa Indians in the area. He also carried out archaeological surveys and conducted ethnographic and oral history field work among the Pima-Maricopa Indians.

Archaeological and historical studies of the Indians of southern Arizona, southern California, northern Sonora, and northern Baja California were Ezell's major interests during his career, along with field work in Bolivia and archaeological excavations at the Spanish presidio of San Diego.

Ezell died of cancer in his San Diego home 29 July 1988.