Wheelwright, Mary C.

Mary Cabot Wheelwright, born on October 22, 1878, was the only child of Andrew Cunningham Wheelwright and Sarah Perkins Cabot Wheelwright. The Cabots were a distinguished and wealthy Boston family. At age 40, after both of her parents had died, Mary traveled to the southwest, where she found and embraced "a more primitive type of civilization, more adventuresome and more exciting than the safety of Boston." She stayed at a dude ranch in Alcalde, N.M., from where she set out on repeated car and pack trips to the Four Corners area and Navajo reservation. She became fascinated with Navajo religion. In 1921, Wheelwright met Arthur and Franc Newcomb, who owned a trading post at Nava, N.M. and introduced Wheelwright to medicine man/singer Hasteen Klah. Klah was concerned about maintaining traditional Navajo religious practice, and had been contemplating a strategy to preserve his knowledge. Wheelwright was committed to learning about Navajo religion. Wheelwright and Klah quickly developed a relationship of mutual respect and began working together. Klah shared many of the Navajo ceremonies with Wheelwright, who recorded and translated them.

Wheelwright divided her time, living part of the year in the eastern United States, traveling the world hoping to find links between cultures and religion, and returning to the home she maintained in Alcalde, N.M. nearly every year. Throughout those years, she continued to record ceremonials given by Klah and other medicine men, fifty-eight in all. She also collected reproductions of ceremonial sandpaintings in mediums such as watercolors, sketches, and textiles, created by Franc Newcomb, Laura Adams Armer, Maud Oakes, Mrs. John Wetherill, Hasteen Klah, and others.

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