TEXT ` Stevenson, Matilda Coxe Evans1849╨1915ethnologistBorn on May 12, 1849, in San Augustine, Texas, Matilda Evans grew up in Washington, D.C. She was educated at Miss Anable╒s 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 husband╒s work and in 1879 accompanied him on an expedition to New Mexico to study the Zuûi 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 Zuûi she studied their domestic life and in particular the roles, duties, and rituals of Zuûi women. Her first major published paper, ╥Religious Life of the Zuûi Child,╙ appeared in the 1883╨1884 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 Women╒s Anthropological Society of America. In March 1888 her important paper on ╥Zuûi 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 1889╨1890 volume of the Bureau╒s annual reports. The Zuûi 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 Zuûi 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 1901╨1902 published her 600-page The Zuûi Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies, her most important written work. The Thirtieth Annual Report of 1908╨1909 printed her ╥Ethnobotany of the Zuûi 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 Zuûi 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 ` ! ¬ 5¬ ( 5¬ 5 !I Γ 5¬ π !I ┘ !I α !I Z 5¬ [ !I N !I i !I ¢ !I ▓ !I │ !I π !I !I !I !I # !I x !I É !I link `
