Isabel T. Kelly’s Southern Paiute Ethnographic Field Notes, 1932–1934

This publication presents the first volume (Las Vegas) of the early ethnographic field work of anthropologist Isabel T. Kelly. From 1932 to 1934, Kelly interviewed thirty Southern Paiute people— from southeastern California, southern Nevada, northern Arizona, and southern Utah— about “the old ways.” She filled 31 notebooks, made maps, took photographs, collected nearly 300 ethnobotanical specimens, purchased and shipped over 400 ethnographic artefacts to museums, and traveled more than 7,000 miles. Her notes comprise the most extensive primary ethnographic documentation of Southern Paiute/ Chemehuevi lifeways of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Although Kelly intended to publish these notes, she was unable to do so before her death. Fowler and Garey-Sage have now synthesised the first set of these handwritten field notes and sketches, providing organisation, commentary and illustrations to put them in context for the modern reader. Kelly’s data, most of whichcould not be gathered anew today, are offered here for the use of generations to come.