Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition 1886-1894

In 1879, Frank Hamilton Cushing, a leading Smithsonian ethnologist, was asked by the Bureau of American Ethnology to join a collecting expedition that traveled to the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico. Here Cushing became convinced that a long-term stay was necessary to conduct his research using pioneering anthropological methodologies of participant-observer and the uniqueness of the "Zuni idea" of culture (Haskell, 1993, p. 10). The Hemenway Expedition to the Southwest was conceived in the summer of 1886, after Cushing sent an appeal to Mrs. Mary Hemenway of Boston. Mary Hemenway was an outstanding philanthropist who passionately supported historic preservation in Boston, many and varied educational efforts, and "a perspective from which to cope with the rapid changes of a new urban and industrial order (ibid, pp.5-6)."

Cushing's enthusiasm and his concept that "archaeology is simply ethnology carried back into prehistoric times" (ibid, p.14) persuaded Hemenway that this would be an expedition worth backing to the tune of an initial investment of $100,000.

The Hemenway Expedition focused on the ethnological, the anthropological, the historical, and the archaeological. The Expedition arrived in New Mexico in December 1886, went to Arizona to excavate in January of 1887, and returned to Zuni in June 1888. During that time Cushing and the other expedition members (Cushing's wife Emily Magill, his sister-in-law and artist Margaret Magill, anthropologist Dr. Herman F.C. ten Kate, historian Dr. Adolf Bandelier, topographer and field manager Charles Garlick, general secretary and draftsman Frederick Webb Hodge, and comparative anatomist Dr. J.L. Wortman) excavated eleven sites, including thirty-four compounds at Los Muertos while conducting ethnographic research among the local populations.

In May of 1889 Jesse Walter Fewkes, a classmate of Mary's son Augustus, was appointed supervisor of digging, and soon took over the expedition due to Cushing's failing health. In 1891 Fewkes moved the expedition to Hopi. The Hemenway Expedition continued until 1894 when Mary Hemenway died at age 74.

Mary Hemenway's son Augustus funded another expedition to Arizona in 1913-14. This expedition was archaeological in nature. Hemenway hired Charles Clark Willoughby and R.G. Fuller to explore various Chinlee Valley sites including Mesa Verde and Tseonitsosi Canon.

From the description of Hemenway Expedition records, 1886-1914. (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 223040830