Frank Hamilton Cushing

Born in Pennsylvania in 1857, Frank Hamilton Cushing became one of the most unusual American scholars of the 19th century. Largely self-taught as a young man, he developed an early passion for Native American artifacts and was soon connected with the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology.

He is most remembered for his years with the Zuni people in New Mexico, where he learned the language and was accepted into parts of community life more deeply than most outside researchers of his era. That immersive approach made his work especially influential, because he tried to understand culture from lived experience rather than from a distance.

Cushing also worked as an archaeologist and wrote about the ancient cultures of the American Southwest and Florida. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1900, but his reputation has lasted because he helped establish participant observation as a serious way of studying human societies.