E. Adamson Hoebel

Name E. Anderson Hoebel
Born November 16 1906
Died July 23 1993
Birth Location Madison, Wisconsin

Anthropologist and briefly the second community analyst at Amache , June to September 1944. A renowned anthropologist known for his pioneering studies on Native American legal systems, E. Adamson Hoebel was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1906. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1928 and went on to M.A. (New York University, 1930) and Ph.D. (Columbia University, 1940) degrees in anthropology, the latter under the direction of Franz Boas. While a graduate student, he became an instructor at NYU and became an assistant professor there in 1936 and an associate in 1942. [1]

He arrived at Amache in June 1944, replacing John Rademaker as the camp's community analyst. During his brief stint there, he focused on reporting on inmate attitudes towards leaving camp ("relocation" in War Relocation Authority language) and also attended the Community Analysis Section conference in Denver in September. After the summer, he returned to NYU. J. Ralph McFarling replaced Hoebel and served as the final community analyst at Amache. [2]

He remained at NYU until 1948, going on to positions at the University of Utah (1948–54) and at the University of Minnesota, where he served served as anthropology department chair for fifteen years until his retirement in 1972. He served as president of the both the American Ethnological Society (1946–47) and American Anthropological Association (1957) and authored a widely used textbook ( Anthropology: The Study of Man , first published in 1949) as well as several specialized monographs on Native Americans. He passed away in St. Paul in 1993. [3]

Authored by Brian Niiya , Densho

For More Information

McFarling, J. Ralph. Final Report: Community Analysis Section, Granada Porject, Amache Colorado . War Relocation Authority, Department of the Interior. July 10, 1945. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Miller, Frank C. "Deaths: E. Adamson Hoebel." Anthropology Newsletter , Sept. 1993, 6.

Footnotes

  1. National Research Council, International Directory of Anthropologists, Section I: Western Hemisphere (Washington, DC, March 1940), 58; Melville J. Herskovits, editor, International Directory of Anthropologists, Third Edition (Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1950), 81; Frank C. Miller, "Deaths: E. Adamson Hoebel," Anthropology Newsletter , Sept. 1993, 6; E. Adamson Hoebel, "The Political Organization and Law of the Comanche Indians," Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1940.
  2. J. Ralph McFarling, Final Report: Community Analysis Section, Granada Porject, Amache Colorado , July 10, 1945 (War Relocation Authority, Department of the Interior), The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, accessed on May 29, 2014 at http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb5h4nb0pz&brand; Peter T. Suzuki, "Anthropologists in the Wartime Camps for Japanese Americans: A Documentary Study," Dialectical Anthropology 6.1 (Aug. 1981), 44.
  3. Miller, "Deaths: E. Adamson Hoebel"; Fifth International Directory of Anthropologists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1975, 166.

Last updated May 6, 2015, 1:16 a.m..