David H. French

David Heath French (May 21, 1918 – 1994) was an American anthropologist and linguist from Bend, Oregon. During his lifetime he was considered the foremost academic authority on the Chinookan people of the middle Columbia River, especially the Wasco-Wishram Chinooks of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon. His research focused on ethnobotany and language.

French attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for three years (1935-1939), studying under Morris Opler. When Opler moved to Pomona College and the Claremont Graduate School, French transferred there to continue studying with him and completed his B.A. there in 1939. (He was later made an honorary alumnus of Reed.) He earned an M.A. at Claremont as well, in 1940. Around this time he did archaeological work in Oregon under Luther S. Cressman.

French's Ph.D. work at Columbia University involved studying under Ralph Linton and Ruth Benedict (he was Benedict's research assistant). He was heavily influenced by the milieu surrounding Franz Boas, who died while French was at Columbia. Later in life French always considered himself a "Boasian," an approach characterized by meticulous and thorough anthropological research in the "recovery ethnography" mode, as well as a preference for conducting linguistic and ethnographic research in tandem. He did dissertation fieldwork at Isleta Pueblo in the Southwest (1941-1942). His dissertation on factionalism at Isleta Pueblo was defended in 1943, but he did not receive his Ph.D. until 1949.

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