author
H. C. (Harry Crécy) Yarrow
1840–1929
A 19th-century army surgeon turned naturalist, he wrote vividly about Native American mortuary customs while also helping build early American herpetology and ornithology. His work sits at the crossroads of science, field exploration, and the collecting culture of the Smithsonian era.
2 Audiobooks
A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians
by H. C. (Harry Crécy) Yarrow
An Introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians
by H. C. (Harry Crécy) Yarrow
About the author
Born in Philadelphia on November 19, 1840, Henry Crécy Yarrow studied medicine and served as an army surgeon during and after the Civil War. He later joined the Wheeler Surveys in the American West, where his fieldwork helped deepen his interests in birds, reptiles, and the natural history of the region.
Yarrow became the first Curator of Herpetology at the United States National Museum, part of the Smithsonian, and was also active in ornithology and ethnology. For readers today, he is especially remembered as the author of A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians, a work that reflects both the ambition and the limits of 19th-century anthropology.
He died on July 2, 1929. His career brought together medicine, museum work, and scientific collecting, leaving a record that still appears in Smithsonian archives, library catalogs, and the history of American natural science.