PARA PAR@` TEXT` Stevenson, Matilda Coxe Evans 18491915 ethnologist Born on May 12, 1849, in San Augustine, Texas, Matilda Evans grew up in Washington, D.C. She was educated at Miss Anables Academy in Philadelphia. In April 1872 she married James Stevenson, a geologist and from 1879 executive officer of the U.S. Geological Survey. She took an interest in her husbands work and in 1879 accompanied him on an expedition to New Mexico to study the Zui for the Bureau of American Ethnology. For some years her assistance to her husband was largely unacknowledged, but in 1884 the British anthropologist Edwin B. Tylor visited the Stevensons, discovered the extent of her original contributions, and publicly commented on her work. On several visits to the Zui she studied their domestic life and in particular the roles, duties, and rituals of Zui women. Her first major published paper, Religious Life of the Zui Child, appeared in the 18831884 annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology and opened an entirely new area of anthropology in the study of children. In 1885 she helped found and became first president of the Womens Anthropological Society of America. In March 1888 her important paper on Zui Religions appeared in Science. On the death of her husband in July of that year she was appointed to the staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology. In 1889 she undertook a study of the people of the Sia pueblo in New Mexico, her report on which appeared in the 18891890 volume of the Bureaus annual reports. The Zui remained her principal interest, however. She was held in great esteem by them, and in consequence she was able to learn much that had been concealed from earlier investigators. She was able, moreover, to observe changes in Zui culture brought about over a span of many years by contact with outsiders such as herself. The Twenty-third Annual Report of the Bureau in 19011902 published her 600-page The Zui Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies, her most important written work. The Thirtieth Annual Report of 19081909 printed her Ethnobotany of the Zui Indians. She also contributed to American Anthropologist and other journals, and her subjects later included the Taos and Tewa Indians as well. She prepared an exhibit of Zui artifacts for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904. From 1904 to 1915 she lived near the San Ildefonso pueblo; when her health failed in the latter year she returned east to Oxon Hill, Maryland, where she died on June 24, 1915. styl`!55(55!I 5!I!I!IZ 5[!IN!Ii!I!I!I!I!I !I!I!I#!Ix!I!Ilink`