ERMINNIE SMITH

COMING SOON

An ethnologist and geologist, Erminnie Adele (Platt) Smith founded the Aesthetic Society of Jersey City in 1876.

An American anthropologist who was the first woman to specialize in ethnographic fieldwork.

"From 1880 to 1885, she focused her studies on the Iroquois Nation reservations in New York and Canada and spent most of her time among the Tuscarora tribe, which bestowed upon her the name of "Beautiful Flower". She amassed their legends and obtained and compiled more than 15,000 words of the Iroquois dialect. Her research was done under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology. Smith was the first woman inducted into the American Academy of Sciences. She was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Historical Society. She was also the first woman to become a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences (1877) and the London Scientific Society. Her publications include numerous scientific papers and Myths of the Iroquois (1883)."

https://archivalcollections.library.mcgill.ca/index.php/smith-erminnie-1836-1886