Viola Garfield
American anthropologist (1899–1983)
Viola E. Garfield (December 5, 1899 – November 25, 1983) was an American anthropologist best known for her work on the social organization and plastic arts of the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia and Alaska.
Early life
Viola Edmundson was born in Des Moines, Iowa. Her family moved a few years later to Coupeville, Washington, on Whidbey Island, where she attended local schools.
She enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle beginning in 1919, transferring for financial reasons to what is now Western Washington University in Bellingham, where she became certified as a teacher. She started a position in the 1920s teaching Tsimshian children in Metlakatla, Alaska, on Annette Island. This experience sparked her interest in Pacific Northwest Coast ethnology.
While working at the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, she became the typist for Charles Garfield, an Alaskan former miner and fur trader. They married in 1924.
Career
In 1927 Garfield re-enrolled at the University of Washington. She earned a B.A. in 1928 and an M.A. in anthropology in 1931, with a thesis on Tsimshian marriage patterns, based on fresh fieldwork in Metlakatla.
“Viola Garfield” enters the record as american anthropologist (1899–1983). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Viola, Garfield and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Viola Garfield” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.