Elsie Clews Parsons

Lore & Background

Elsie Clews Parsons was a physically small woman with a commanding intellect, known for her sharp, direct manner and a relentless drive to challenge social conventions. Her appearance was often described as refined, reflecting her upbringing in a wealthy New York banking family, but her defining characteristic was a radical, uncompromising feminist and anthropological vision. She conducted extensive fieldwork across the American Southwest and Mexico, focusing on Native American tribes including the Tewa and Hopi. Her range of study was broad, encompassing not only Pueblo cultures but also folklore from the Cape Verde Islands, the Sea Islands of South Carolina, the Micmac people, and the French and English Antilles. Her habitat as a researcher was both the academic institutions of the Northeast—she helped found The New School and held key editorial and presidential roles in major anthropological and folklore societies—and the remote pueblos and villages where she gathered data. A defining characteristic of her approach was the belief that folklore provided a crucial key to understanding a culture, and she saw anthropology itself as a tool for social reform. Her landmark work, *Pueblo Indian Religion*, compiled extensive prior research, though it has since been criticized for relying on intrusive and deceptive methods. She was also a prolific writer under her own name and the pseudonym John Main, producing early feminist sociological works that advocated for trial marriage, divorce by mutual consent, and accessible contraception.

Reader's Guide

Elsie Clews Parsons’s career spanned sociology, anthropology, and folklore, with a focus on Native American communities including the Tewa and Hopi in the Southwest and Mexico. She believed folklore was essential for understanding a culture and that anthropology could drive social change. Her comprehensive work *Pueblo Indian Religion* is regarded as a classic, though it has been criticized for relying on intrusive and deceptive research methods. She also conducted folklore research in the Cape Verde Islands, the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Micmac communities, and the Antilles. Parsons helped establish The New School and served as associate editor of *The Journal of American Folklore* from 1918 until her death. She was president of the American Folklore Society, later of the American Ethnological Society, and in 1941 became the first female president of the American Anthropological Association, just before she died. Her feminist ideas were considered extremely radical for her time; she advocated trial marriages, divorce by mutual consent, and access to reliable contraception, topics she addressed in her early book *The Family*. The American Ethnological Society awards the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize biennially for the best graduate student essay in her honor.

Did You Know?

• Elsie Clews Parsons was elected the first female president of the American Anthropological Association shortly before her death.
• She helped found The New School.
• She published two controversial books under the pseudonym John Main while her husband was in Congress.
• Her work Pueblo Indian Religion is considered a classic, though it has been criticized as based on intrusive and deceptive research techniques.