Frank Cushing

Frank Hamilton Cushing (July 22, 1857 in North East Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania – April 10, 1900 in Washington DC) was an American anthropologist and ethnologist. He made pioneering studies of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico by entering into their culture; his work helped establish participant observation as a common anthropological research strategy.

Cushing was born in North East, Pennsylvania. He later moved with his family to western New York. As a boy he took an interest in the Native American artifacts in the surrounding countryside and taught himself how to knap flint (make arrowheads and such from flint). He published his first scientific paper when he was 17.

After a brief period at Cornell University, where he put together and curated an exhibit of Indian artifacts, Cushing attracted notice from the director of the Smithsonian Institution. At 19 Cushing was appointed curator of the ethnological department of the National Museum in Washington, D.C. There he came to the attention of John Wesley Powell, of the Bureau of Ethnology.

Cushing was invited by Powell to join the James Stevenson anthropological expedition to New Mexico. The group traveled by rail to the end of the line at Las Vegas, New Mexico, then on to Zuni Pueblo. Fascinated by this culture, Cushing gained permission to stay at the pueblo. He "went native", living with the Zuni from 1879 to 1884, and becoming anthropology's first participant observer. (This credit is usually assigned to Bronisław Malinowski, whose work with the Trobriand Islanders did not take place until more than 30 years following Cushing's stay at Zuni.)

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