Green, Esther Margaret, 1901-1986

Helen Margaret (née Schweitzer-Stiefel) Greene (12 September 1901 – 01 July 1986) was born in Manhattan, New York. She attended Wellesley College for two years in 1924 but did not graduate. She married Milo E. Greene and had one son, Peter, in 1933. In 1951, Greene moved to Taos, New Mexico. Upon discovering that “American Indians were very much alive and a had a venerable, yet animated culture,” she began attending ceremonies, collecting arts & crafts, and learning the Hopi language. She encountered many obstacles as there was no definitive dictionary on the Hopi language at the time. It was because of this that Greene’s friend, anthropologist Alice Marriott, suggested that Greene compile her own “How to Say It” word list. Beginning in 1953, Greene spent over 7 years off and on living with her son Peter at Kykotsmovi on the Hopi Reservation in order to compile her phrasebook. Her Hopi name was Bahan So’oh.

In 1959 -1960, Greene attended the University of Arizona, Tucson, and studied anthropology. And in 1961, at Marriott’s suggestion, Greene was appointed a Research Associate at the Logan Museum of Anthropology at Beloit College in Wisconsin for 3 years. Throughout the 1960s, Greene donated her collection of 305 ethnographic objects to the Logan Museum that she bought directly from native Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Laguna, San Ildefonso Pueblos, as well as Navajo, Apache, Havasupai, and Tohono O’odham artists. And prior to 1971, she also donated katsina dolls and books to the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA).

In 1975, Greene moved from Tucson to spend the summer in a trailer at the research center at MNA in Flagstaff to begin typing up her “Hopi Vocabulary.” She frequently consulted with P. David Seaman, a linguist in the Anthropology Department at Northern Arizona University (NAU) and research associate at MNA from 1975-[?] at the behest of Edward Danson, MNA director.

In 1976, Greene donated her archival collection to MNA. Seaman, who was working on his first edition of the “Hopi Dictionary,” which was published in 1985, removed her papers from the MNA Archives and when Greene’s health began failing, at her request he promised to collate her collection before returning it to the MNA archives. Seaman, along with his graduate assistant, Carol N. Motter, finished arranging Greene’s notes by subject into 8 volumes in October, 1987.

Greene died in Scottsdale, Arizona in July, 1986.

From the guide to the Helen Margaret Greene collection, 1920s-1987, (The Museum of Northern Arizona)