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Walter Hough
1859–1935
An early Smithsonian ethnologist and curator, this American scholar devoted much of his career to studying Indigenous cultures of the American Southwest. He is especially remembered for careful museum work and for research on Hopi life, material culture, and technology.
2 Audiobooks
Fire-making Apparatus in the U. S. National Museum
by Walter Hough
The Hopi Indians
by Walter Hough
About the author
Born on April 23, 1859, Walter Hough was an American ethnologist who spent most of his professional life at the Smithsonian Institution. He worked with the U.S. National Museum and became known for collecting, documenting, and interpreting artifacts with unusual care, helping shape how anthropology was presented in museums.
His research focused heavily on the peoples of the American Southwest, especially the Hopi. He wrote on subjects ranging from pottery and dwellings to fire-making tools and everyday technologies, with a style that combined field observation and close attention to objects.
Hough died in 1935, leaving behind a body of work that reflects an important period in the history of American anthropology. While some scholarship from his era is now read in historical context, his efforts to record material culture and museum collections remain part of the Smithsonian's long scientific legacy.