Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy E. Wilson. Before we get started,
Speaker 1: we'll do a little reminder at the top of this
Speaker 1: one that we have a live show coming up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very exciting. Yeah. This is at the Indiana History Center,
Speaker 1: the Eugene and Marlyn Glick Indiana History Center. It's going
Speaker 1: to be on Friday, July nineteenth. You can come to
Speaker 1: the show and buy a ticket just for that, or
Speaker 1: you can buy a ticket that includes a meet and
Speaker 1: greet with us beforehand. We would love to see you there.
Speaker 1: It's as I said, Friday July nineteenth. It's going to
Speaker 1: be very fun. We have been there before, we really
Speaker 1: loved it. They have some exhibits I'm real excited to
Speaker 1: see this time. If you would like to come and
Speaker 1: see us and see the many cool things they have
Speaker 1: going on, you can check out Indianahistory dot org slash
Speaker 1: events and get all of your info and register. And
Speaker 1: now we'll hop into the episode, which is about George
Speaker 1: Gustav High, who is a person that came across my
Speaker 1: zone of interest a while back, and I kept tiptoeing
Speaker 1: around him and thinking, do I really want to talk
Speaker 1: about this guy? And I do. His work in curating
Speaker 1: a collection of Native American artifacts has been really important
Speaker 1: because it has enabled many people to learn about indigenous cultures.
Speaker 1: But there's, of course the raft of problems involved. His
Speaker 1: collecting practices and his relationship to those cultures are very complicated.
Speaker 1: He sounds like a very interesting person to know, but
Speaker 1: also not without his foibles and problems. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about him today and how we're still living
Speaker 1: in a world influenced by what he did. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was not a name I was familiar with until you
Speaker 1: told me that you're working on this episode. Yeah. George
Speaker 1: Gustav Hi was born September sixteenth, eighteen seventy four, in
Speaker 1: New York City at two ninety eight Lexington Avenue. Specifically,
Speaker 1: this was the family home. His parents were Carl Friedrich
Speaker 1: Gustav High and Marie Antoinette Lawrence High. Carl had been
Speaker 1: born in Germany and made his fortune in petroleum and
Speaker 1: started a company called Economy Refining Company. That business was
Speaker 1: eventually bought out for a very large sum by John D. Rockefeller,
Speaker 1: who made it part of Standard Oil. We have a
Speaker 1: whole podcast about that. He kept carl On in an
Speaker 1: executive position after that. So George, Gustav and his sister
Speaker 1: also named Marie Antoinette. Like their mother, they were both
Speaker 1: born into wealth. George's youth sounds fairly idyllic and carefree.
Speaker 1: He grew up with other wealthy boys as friends, and
Speaker 1: the High family spent summers at Lake Hapetcong, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the year Georgia attended Berkeley School.
Speaker 1: He often traveled to Europe with his father on business
Speaker 1: from the time he was a very young boy, so
Speaker 1: he was really very well traveled in comparison to most
Speaker 1: people living in the United States, certainly in comparison to
Speaker 1: other children. He graduated from the Berkeley School in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. While he was still a student, George had
Speaker 1: joined the National Guard and served in Company one, seventh
Speaker 1: Regiment of the New York Guard from eighteen ninety to
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six. He enrolled at Columbia for his undergraduate
Speaker 1: work and maintained active status in the Guard during his
Speaker 1: studies there. In eighteen ninety two, High started studying electrical
Speaker 1: engineering that was a new course at Columbia and that
Speaker 1: was part of the School of Minds there. While there
Speaker 1: he assisted Professor Michael Poopa in work that he was
Speaker 1: doing in long distance telephony. High senior thesis was a
Speaker 1: collaborative project with another student and friend, Paul McGann, on
Speaker 1: the use of organic oils as lubricants. I have a
Speaker 1: fun story about the thesis from behind the scenes. On
Speaker 1: Friday Great during his senior year, George was called up
Speaker 1: as a guardsman for the first and only time when
Speaker 1: a street trolley strike led to concerns of riots. And
Speaker 1: this strike, which involved five thousand workers walking off the
Speaker 1: job under the umbrella of the group Knights of Labor,
Speaker 1: tied up Brooklyn's transportation completely and it started out peacefully,
Speaker 1: but within a day pockets of violence had started to
Speaker 1: erupt as scab workers were brought in and the striking
Speaker 1: laborers physically restrained trolleys from moving. After a week of
Speaker 1: escalating tension, the National Guard had been brought in, and
Speaker 1: although George and his colleagues got the trolleys moving again,
Speaker 1: there were still many incidents of violence between strikers and
Speaker 1: the scab workers that had been hired in from other cities.
Speaker 1: As well as between strike workers and the militia. One
Speaker 1: striker was shot by the guard. George, though appears to
Speaker 1: have been pretty unscathed in the month long con and
Speaker 1: he went back to school when it was all over.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety six, High graduated with his electrical engineering degree.
Speaker 1: He'd already been taking engineering jobs before graduation. Although there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of information on the specifics, we
Speaker 1: do know that he was contracted with the White Crosby
Speaker 1: Company and often traveled for his jobs, and it's during
Speaker 1: that travel that he found the focus of his life's work.
Speaker 1: We have his own account of this experience. It includes
Speaker 1: some outdated language. We're reading it because it's such a
Speaker 1: formative moment in his story. Quote in eighteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: I was sent to Kingman, Arizona as assistant superintendent of
Speaker 1: construction for a branch track to a mine about seventeen
Speaker 1: miles distant. I obtained a number of Navajo Indians for
Speaker 1: use as laborers for grading the right of way. I
Speaker 1: lived in a tent on the work, and in the
Speaker 1: evenings I used to wander about the Indians quarters. One
Speaker 1: night I noticed the wife of one of my Indian
Speaker 1: foremen biting on what seemed to be a piece of skin.
Speaker 1: Upon inquiry, I found she was chewing the seams of
Speaker 1: her husband's deer skin shirt in order to kill the lice.
Speaker 1: I bought the shirt, became interested in Aboriginal customs, and
Speaker 1: acquired other objects as opportunity offered, sending them back from
Speaker 1: time to time to my home at eleven East forty
Speaker 1: eighth Street. In fact, I spent more time collecting Navajo
Speaker 1: costume pieces and trinkets than I did superintending road beds.
Speaker 1: That shirt was the start of my collection. Naturally, when
Speaker 1: I had a shirt, I wanted a rattle and moccasins,
Speaker 1: and then the collecting bugs seized me and I was lost.
Speaker 1: When I returned to New York after about ten months
Speaker 1: in Arizona, I found quite an accumulation in articles. These
Speaker 1: I placed about my room, and I began to read
Speaker 1: rather intently on the subject of the Indians. So, okay,
Speaker 1: I never find anyone commenting on this, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about it, because this idea of chewing leather
Speaker 1: seems to combat lice seems like it must have been
Speaker 1: some sort of misunderstanding. I could not find any mention
Speaker 1: of this practice. There are tales of leather hides being
Speaker 1: chewed to soften the seams, but even that is considered
Speaker 1: kind of an old wives tale and it's not really substantiated. Also,
Speaker 1: lice doesn't really tend to cling to leather. I went
Speaker 1: down a whole rabbit hole about that. So there are
Speaker 1: some mysteries in this account that I wrote, And likely
Speaker 1: this sort of strange thing is informed by a bit
Speaker 1: of otherism in trying to characterize the Navajo that he
Speaker 1: came into contact with as having these difficult to understand
Speaker 1: practices from a white person's perspective, and also just as
Speaker 1: part of exoticizing them. But he really did have a
Speaker 1: fascination with North American indigenous cultures from this moment on,
Speaker 1: and as he continued to travel work, he made it
Speaker 1: a point to indulge his hobby everywhere he went. As
Speaker 1: he mentioned in that account, kinda was doing more of
Speaker 1: that than his actual job at times. Professionally, George Gustav
Speaker 1: High next moved to the business of banking. In nineteen
Speaker 1: oh one, he formed an investment firm known as Battles
Speaker 1: High and Harrison. During the years that followed, he was
Speaker 1: able to make a lot of connections that would further
Speaker 1: his work in collecting indigenous artifacts, although he also had
Speaker 1: a hand briefly in entertainment. In nineteen oh four, he
Speaker 1: financed the construction of the Hudson Theater on West forty
Speaker 1: fourth Street. High sold the Hudson Theater after running it
Speaker 1: for a few years, but it's still there and it's
Speaker 1: still actively part of the Broadway scene. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: as we're recording this, it is currently in the middle
Speaker 1: of a run of Merrily We Roll Along. Some of
Speaker 1: the people that George meant in his early years of collecting,
Speaker 1: both before and after he started the banking firm, included
Speaker 1: Joseph Kepler Junior, Marshall H. Saville, and George H. Pepper.
Speaker 1: Joseph Kepler Junior is pretty interesting. He was born Udo
Speaker 1: Kepler on April fourth, eighteen seventy two, in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Speaker 1: He studied at the Columbia Institute and abroad before stepping
Speaker 1: into his career in the same line of work as
Speaker 1: his father, that was political cartooning. Joseph Kepler Senior was
Speaker 1: the founder of Puck Magazine, and Udo became a contributor
Speaker 1: to it in eighteen ninety and then when Joseph Senior
Speaker 1: died in eighteen ninety four, Udo inherited his position and
Speaker 1: became part owner of the magazine, and at that point
Speaker 1: he also changed his name to Joseph Kepler Junior. And
Speaker 1: it was while he was helming Puck that Kepler met
Speaker 1: George Gustav High, and the two men shared this passion
Speaker 1: of Native American object collecting and study. Kepler's specific area
Speaker 1: of interest was the Iroquois, and he and II traveled
Speaker 1: together on trips to reservations during their friendship, and their
Speaker 1: first was in eighteen ninety nine when they visited the
Speaker 1: Cattaraugus and ti on Awanda reservations in western New York State.
Speaker 1: Unlike Kepler, who was an ardent but amateur collector, George
Speaker 1: Pepper was a professional ethnologist. He was born February second,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, in Tottenville, New York, on Staten Island.
Speaker 1: He was interested in archaeology from an early age and
Speaker 1: spent time studying at the Peabody Museum at Harvard before
Speaker 1: getting a job at the American Museum of Natural History
Speaker 1: in New York, working as an assistant curator of Southwestern collections.
Speaker 1: Next he moved to Columbia University. Pepper's expertise further expanded
Speaker 1: High's interest and understanding of the bigger picture of Native
Speaker 1: American cultures of North America. Marshall Seville was also a professional.
Speaker 1: He had attended Harvard University and became particularly fascinated with
Speaker 1: Mexican history, and when Hi met him, he was a
Speaker 1: professor at Columbia and a founding member of the Explorers Club.
Speaker 1: He was also a few year older than High, Pepper,
Speaker 1: and Kepler, and he took on something of a mentor
Speaker 1: role with High in particular, and those two men would
Speaker 1: work together for decades. Through Kepler and especially Seville and Pepper,
Speaker 1: Hi realized that his haphazard approach to collecting was doing
Speaker 1: a disservice to the items that he had acquired in
Speaker 1: his early years of interest. High wasn't systematic in cataloging
Speaker 1: things or making sure to have careful notes about their providence.
Speaker 1: But he was mentored by his more experienced acquaintances to
Speaker 1: start taking more care when it came to records and
Speaker 1: to consider his collecting with more purpose instead of just
Speaker 1: picking up interesting things when he came across them. He
Speaker 1: started to consider how they fit into a larger collection
Speaker 1: to tell a story or enhance the narrative that might
Speaker 1: be told about the indigenous cultures they had come from.
Speaker 1: This led to High acquiring larger and sometimes already curated
Speaker 1: collections rather than collecting them piecemeal. And the first of
Speaker 1: these was one that Kepler and Seville had suggested. It
Speaker 1: was a bunch of pre Columbian pottery that had been
Speaker 1: found in New Mexico. So his collecting suddenly became a
Speaker 1: lot more serious, But this also often meant that he
Speaker 1: was buying from some other collector, whereas his small, one
Speaker 1: at a time purchases had generally been directly from Native
Speaker 1: Americans or indigenous people he had interacted with. He started
Speaker 1: purchasing these larger groups of objects in nineteen oh three,
Speaker 1: which is noted as a time when his interest transitioned
Speaker 1: from being a hobby to being his life's work. One
Speaker 1: part of this shift in his focus was that he
Speaker 1: started to put his considerable financial assets into financing trips
Speaker 1: and expeditions for and with various researchers to study and
Speaker 1: collect indigenous artifacts. This was not just a matter of
Speaker 1: George High opening his checkbook to make these trips happen
Speaker 1: according to a biography of High written by Jay Alden
Speaker 1: Mason in nineteen fifty eight, which was shortly after Hig's death.
Speaker 1: Hi's mother, Marie Antoinette, paid for a lot of these efforts.
Speaker 1: She had family money in addition to her fortune that
Speaker 1: her husband Carl had amassed, and she was happily willing
Speaker 1: to support her son's interests with it. In the course
Speaker 1: of just a few years, High funded trips were mounted
Speaker 1: to Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador. German American anthropologist Franz
Speaker 1: Boas was the source of an important acquisition for High.
Speaker 1: Boas was at the time teaching at Columbia University. He's
Speaker 1: credited with working to make anthropology a field of academic
Speaker 1: study while he was there, and BoA's, who had items
Speaker 1: he wanted to sell because he needed money to pay
Speaker 1: for his own research, hit a brick wall when he
Speaker 1: was trying to sell those to museums, and then he
Speaker 1: offered parts of his collection to George High. Hi also
Speaker 1: started to finance the research work that BoA's was doing
Speaker 1: that the university would not fund. Remember, this was still
Speaker 1: a relatively new field for academia and certainly for Columbia.
Speaker 1: So at this point Hi was paying through his mother
Speaker 1: for Marshall Seville, George Pepper, and Franz Boas to all
Speaker 1: Mount Field research expeditions. Coming up, We'll talk a bit
Speaker 1: about what was going on in High's personal life at
Speaker 1: this time, but first we will pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Another development in George's life was unfolding at the same
Speaker 1: time that he made his pivot to professional collector. On
Speaker 1: January fifth, nineteen oh four, he married Blanche Agnes Williams,
Speaker 1: who was from Massachusetts, and the pair moved to a
Speaker 1: new apartment at six sixty seven Madison Avenue. But George's
Speaker 1: collection quickly became too large to keep in their living space,
Speaker 1: and so he rented another space on thirty ninth Street,
Speaker 1: and when his acquisitions outgrew that space, he moved them
Speaker 1: to another space on East thirty third that he renovated
Speaker 1: to have an extra floor. And sometime during all of
Speaker 1: this movement and growth, he and others started referring to
Speaker 1: his growing collection as the High Museum, not of course,
Speaker 1: to be confused with the High Museum in Atlanta, spelled differently.
Speaker 1: George's name is Hye, but also not a museum in
Speaker 1: the sense that it was a place people could go visit.
Speaker 1: I also had this high museum confusion when you first
Speaker 1: told me you were working on this. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: had only heard his name said out loud. I had
Speaker 1: not read it on anything. It is spelled h eye,
Speaker 1: not high. One of Georgia's most important acquisitions in the
Speaker 1: first decade of the twentieth century was a Hidatza medicine bundle.
Speaker 1: The Hidatsa people are part of the Three Affiliated Tribes
Speaker 1: nation of North Dakota. George acquired this piece in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh seven, and we are mentioning it here in the
Speaker 1: timeline of when he took possession of it. This becomes
Speaker 1: important decades later, so keep in mind, Yeah, he acquired
Speaker 1: it from a missionary who had gotten it in some way.
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh eight, George hired Mark Raymond Harrington, who
Speaker 1: had just graduated from Columbia with a master's degree in anthropology,
Speaker 1: as a full time collector for him, so basically someone
Speaker 1: he could just send out into the field to collect
Speaker 1: whenever he needed it. Harrington was instrumental in rapidly expanding
Speaker 1: the collection as he traveled along the North American East coast,
Speaker 1: and then across the South and acquired items from tribes
Speaker 1: everywhere he went. Although High had moved into progressively bigger
Speaker 1: spaces with his collection, it was never enough either, as
Speaker 1: Hi kept on buying up artifacts and now had people
Speaker 1: working under him to find even more. He made a
Speaker 1: deal with the University of Pennsylvania to house a large
Speaker 1: chunk of the collection from North America as a long
Speaker 1: term loan. This deal also included George becoming a vice
Speaker 1: president and his friends George Pepper and Mark Harrington being
Speaker 1: given positions so they could oversee the collection and continue
Speaker 1: to curate it for the university museum. He also paid
Speaker 1: for the university to do its own research projects in
Speaker 1: the field, as well as higher additional staff. In the
Speaker 1: book Collecting Native America, Clara Sue Kidwell notes in her
Speaker 1: biography of High that because of his ability to finance
Speaker 1: scholarship and anthropology privately, he was this very unique figure
Speaker 1: who was able to set up deals like this just
Speaker 1: as a private collector. This isn't like a case of
Speaker 1: institutions making some sort of trade agreement. He was just
Speaker 1: a guy who could throw money at things. This gave
Speaker 1: him so much power. According to Kidwell, he was able
Speaker 1: to dictate the University Museum's research and project planning because
Speaker 1: of it. Additionally, Georgia gustav Hi was a huge figure,
Speaker 1: both literally and figuratively. He was six foot three and
Speaker 1: waiter reported three hundred pounds. He was jovial with people,
Speaker 1: and he had this big personality and was really good
Speaker 1: at gaining people's trusts when he wanted so. His stature
Speaker 1: and personality, combined with his financial power, made him really
Speaker 1: formidable when he wanted something. In nineteen oh nine, High
Speaker 1: had stepped back from the banking firm, although he stayed
Speaker 1: connected to it for another five years, but in nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen he made the decision to leave banking completely to
Speaker 1: focus on his collection. He had continued to hire staff
Speaker 1: to help him collect and things. We're moving so quickly
Speaker 1: that he really couldn't make time for anything but his collection.
Speaker 1: He also shifted his focus back to being more personally
Speaker 1: involved in excavations and research trips. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: an incident that happened on one such trip in just
Speaker 1: a bit. And just to be clear, High's work was
Speaker 1: not a case where people didn't appreciate what he was
Speaker 1: doing until after his death. He made headlines all the time.
Speaker 1: For example, on February seventeenth, nineteen thirteen, the Daily Arkansas
Speaker 1: Gazette ran a story into the headline New York broker
Speaker 1: loses his yacht in making the discovery, but doesn't care much.
Speaker 1: That story shares how George was at the time financing
Speaker 1: three different expeditions in the West Indies and how one
Speaker 1: of the teams had located a pre Columbian paddle that
Speaker 1: was very valuable in a cave on Moore Island. The
Speaker 1: story goes into great detail about how paddles like it
Speaker 1: were described in writing about Columbus's travels in the area,
Speaker 1: and that it's believed that such paddles had not been
Speaker 1: seen since the late fifteenth century, and that the collected
Speaker 1: four foot long specimen was believed to be more than
Speaker 1: five hundred years old. And in the course of that find,
Speaker 1: a yacht called the Bessie J began taking on water
Speaker 1: during a storm and was lost. That was a yacht
Speaker 1: that was George's, and the write up mentions that four
Speaker 1: of the crew members aboard got into a dinghy and
Speaker 1: they were picked up later, but that one member of
Speaker 1: the crew might have been lost while they talk a
Speaker 1: lot about this boat. There's no further comment on that
Speaker 1: man's fate. But at the same time High's work was
Speaker 1: being written about with admiration, a very different sort of
Speaker 1: article about him was also populating its way through the
Speaker 1: North American press. Missus High had filed for divorce, and
Speaker 1: it seemed like everybody wanted to talk about it, especially
Speaker 1: about the couple's finances. The Washington Post wrote all about it,
Speaker 1: including the information that High's work was part of what
Speaker 1: drove the pair apart. Quote. The differences between mister and
Speaker 1: Missus High were set in the published report to be
Speaker 1: due to incompatibility of temperament, which had increased as mister
Speaker 1: High had become more and more absorbed in his scientific
Speaker 1: researches and as Missus High had become more devoted to
Speaker 1: her social duties. Coverage of their split escalated, and by
Speaker 1: the time the couple had their first hearing, it was
Speaker 1: covered in the papers every single day. A detail had
Speaker 1: emerged that kept readers of papers engrossed. A woman who
Speaker 1: was not named publicly had been named in the suit
Speaker 1: as well, suggesting that George had been having a fear.
Speaker 1: But while that might have caused a scandal, more attention
Speaker 1: was paid to the amount of alimony that Missus High
Speaker 1: was seeking. A brief blurb that ran all over the
Speaker 1: country and even internationally read simply quote, twenty one cents
Speaker 1: a minute, or seventy eight thousand dollars a year is
Speaker 1: the amount of alimony asked here today by Missus Blanche,
Speaker 1: a High, wife of George Gustavhi. The correspondent is characterized
Speaker 1: in Missus High's divorce complaint as a person of no prominence,
Speaker 1: And it seemed that most of the press just started
Speaker 1: going after Blanche, noting that that alimony that was requested
Speaker 1: was believed to be the highest ever on record. In
Speaker 1: a response, George's lawyers chose to accuse Blanche of bleeding
Speaker 1: George's fortune dry. One newspaper report quoted counsel as saying, quote,
Speaker 1: Missus High's sole idea was to come to New York
Speaker 1: and shine in society. By reason of his wife's extravagance,
Speaker 1: his estate has dwindled to three hundred and sixty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and his income is now only twenty nine thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year. This was in contrast to a previous number
Speaker 1: given for George's worth of one million dollars. The judge
Speaker 1: in the case, named Aspinall, gave the following quote on
Speaker 1: the matter, quote, you may be absolutely certain that I
Speaker 1: shall not allow seventy eight thousand dollars alimony to any woman.
Speaker 1: These New York society women make me tired. They live
Speaker 1: too high. They go to fashionable hotels and drink highballs
Speaker 1: and smoke cigarettes instead of staying home and trying to
Speaker 1: make their husbands happy. They ride up Fifth Avenue in
Speaker 1: their fine automobiles with poodle dogs in their laps. And
Speaker 1: when they are married to a poor man unfortunate enough
Speaker 1: to have a million dollars, they come for it in
Speaker 1: court and say their social position requires an exorbitant amount
Speaker 1: of alimony. It will take me very little time to
Speaker 1: decide this motion. I feel like if a judge gave
Speaker 1: a quote like that ahead of a decision today, there
Speaker 1: might be some problems. Gossip columns started reporting that Blanche
Speaker 1: spent five hundred and eighty one dollars a month on
Speaker 1: alcohol and another forty nine dollars a month on cigars.
Speaker 1: Some even started to falsely report that George had been
Speaker 1: the one to file for divorce, showing a full turn
Speaker 1: of the press against missus High. There were some paper
Speaker 1: so that offered a counter argument. The Cincinnati Post noted,
Speaker 1: in a write up detailing Blanche's expenses, quote, nothing is
Speaker 1: said about what the husband spent, but it is a
Speaker 1: safe guess that if he had been trying like a
Speaker 1: man to live simply and wholesomely, the wife would never
Speaker 1: have been encouraged or allowed to form these ridiculous, wasteful,
Speaker 1: and extravagant habits. The Post also says that the judge
Speaker 1: probably should find for a lower alimony, but also that quote,
Speaker 1: we wish that he would say something fitting about the
Speaker 1: rich men of New York who make it a practice
Speaker 1: to spoil the women with whom they associate. They are
Speaker 1: the real profligates. This whole thing is very hard to
Speaker 1: read because it's all real, sexist and weird. But in
Speaker 1: the end, Judge Aspinall awarded Blanche just fifteen thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year, as well as custody of the couple's two children.
Speaker 1: As for George, despite the seeming likelihood that he had
Speaker 1: possibly cheated on his wife, he seemed to emerge from
Speaker 1: the divorce with an unscathed reputation. In the years. Following
Speaker 1: the divorce settlement, High threw himself even more into his work.
Speaker 1: Before we talked about Blanche and George's divorce, we mentioned
Speaker 1: an incident that we said we'd return to. That was
Speaker 1: a trip he had made with his team to New
Speaker 1: Jersey where they excavated a Native American cemetery. During their excavation,
Speaker 1: George and his assistants found themselves in hot water. According
Speaker 1: to the Hudson Observer on July twenty second, nineteen fourteen, quote,
Speaker 1: Sussex County invoked the majesty of the law this week
Speaker 1: to stop George G. High of New York, a well
Speaker 1: known scientist, and his laborers from digging up the skeletons
Speaker 1: of Indians in the old Menacing burying ground in Sandytown Township.
Speaker 1: Berson Bell, who owns the land, had sold the right
Speaker 1: to excavate and remove the bones, and he was satisfied,
Speaker 1: but it appears that a lot of other folks were
Speaker 1: not so. Criminal proceedings were brought under a sanitary code,
Speaker 1: and a Justice of the piece imposed fines ranging from
Speaker 1: ten dollars each on the laborers to one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: on their employer. In the Hope of stopping the sacrilege,
Speaker 1: so even then people knew that this was wrong. George
Speaker 1: appeeled those fines. He felt that if he let the
Speaker 1: judgment stand, it was going to create a precedent for
Speaker 1: archaeology efforts to be hampered by legal issues going forward.
Speaker 1: He did get that ruling overturned, and he also felt
Speaker 1: that the skeletons that he had unearthed were important, and
Speaker 1: he sent them to the Smithsonian along with a paper
Speaker 1: that he wrote about the excavation, undoubtedly to kind of
Speaker 1: bolster it as something that was academically important. Nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: was a significant year for High died in February, which
Speaker 1: meant he had direct access to his family money and
Speaker 1: no longer had to go through her to get it
Speaker 1: for his furious projects. He also went on an excavation
Speaker 1: trip to North Carolina, where he had to do some
Speaker 1: maneuvering to convince a landowner to let him dig up
Speaker 1: a burial mound on his property. And George also remarried
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifteen to Dorothean cown Page, who went by
Speaker 1: THEA and how the two met is reported a little
Speaker 1: differently from source to source, but a lot of them
Speaker 1: suggest that they met on that North Carolina dig. What's clear, though,
Speaker 1: is that they very much shared an interest in archaeology.
Speaker 1: The couple honeymooned by going on a dig at the
Speaker 1: Nakuchie Mound in White County, Georgia. Hi's visions for his
Speaker 1: collection evolved in the nineteeneens, and he made the decision
Speaker 1: that he wanted to open a public museum in New York.
Speaker 1: There were arguments made to him by existing institutions that
Speaker 1: such a collection would be more effective elsewhere, perhaps tied
Speaker 1: to those existing institutions, but High was adamant that he
Speaker 1: wanted to give New York the resources that he had
Speaker 1: found lacking when he first became interested in anthropology. He
Speaker 1: wanted people to be able to go somewhere and learn
Speaker 1: about indigenous cultures outside of academia. But to be clear,
Speaker 1: he was envisioning this as a place for people like him,
Speaker 1: wealthy businessmen with time and money. And a letter to
Speaker 1: Franz Boas about it, he specifically mentions quote men in
Speaker 1: New York that are placed as I was when discussing
Speaker 1: the people whose interests he was hoping to serve. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen he established the High Foundation and the
Speaker 1: Museum of the American Indian As part of this new venture,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, the collection that was on loan to
Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania was moved from the school's museum
Speaker 1: to its new home in New York. And while there
Speaker 1: have been rumors over the years of some sort of
Speaker 1: big fallout between High and the organization and they were disappointed,
Speaker 1: to be sure, there is also plenty of correspondence between
Speaker 1: George and the leadership of the university and its museum
Speaker 1: that seems quite cordial and appreciative. In both directions that
Speaker 1: was written after the fact, it truly seems that more
Speaker 1: than anything from George's position, it was just a matter
Speaker 1: of space finally being available for him to once again
Speaker 1: manage it himself, though it is one hundred percent truth
Speaker 1: the university would have rather than it stayed there. Hi
Speaker 1: gave the university museum other artifacts in return for the
Speaker 1: withdrawal of his collection, although they were by all estimations,
Speaker 1: much less valuable, and at least some of them seem
Speaker 1: to have been replicas and not original pieces. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the delayed opening of High's museum and
Speaker 1: a really reprehensible deception that he was part of. First
Speaker 1: we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuffiness in
Speaker 1: history class going. Once High's museum was founded, a number
Speaker 1: of his wealthy longtime friends from New York started donating
Speaker 1: their own collections to it, as well as supporting it
Speaker 1: with financial donations. Marshall Seville became the museum's director, and
Speaker 1: though this whole project had a great deal of support,
Speaker 1: it took six years from the time that construction began
Speaker 1: to when it finally opened, and that was because of
Speaker 1: the outbreak of World War One. But in nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: the Museum of the American Indian opened its doors to visitors.
Speaker 1: While setting up the structure of his museum, George also
Speaker 1: hired Frederick Webb Hodge, who had been at the Smithsonian,
Speaker 1: to edit a periodical for the Museum of the American Indian,
Speaker 1: knowing that it was important to publish scholarly works if
Speaker 1: he wanted to have his museum taken seriously in academic circles.
Speaker 1: One of the men that High hired was Amos E.
Speaker 1: One Road, who was a Dakota man and a minister
Speaker 1: who had studied at Columbia's Divinity School. Had started working
Speaker 1: with anthropologist Allenson B. Skinner several years before High started
Speaker 1: working on his museum, and one wrote in Skinner worked
Speaker 1: on a series of stories about Amos's experience growing up
Speaker 1: as a Native American. The published anthology of these stories
Speaker 1: that Skinner was planning got shelved when Skinner died in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five. That book, In Case You're Interested, was
Speaker 1: published finally in two thousand and three under the title
Speaker 1: Being Dakota, but the museum's publication, Indian Notes, started being
Speaker 1: published in nineteen twenty four. As planned. The museum, of course,
Speaker 1: took up a lot of High's time, but not so
Speaker 1: much that he stopped mounting research trips. Hi had a
Speaker 1: veritable army of archaeologists dispatched throughout the Americas hunting for
Speaker 1: objects to expand the collection. But what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: he also paid for other museums to mount expeditions, and
Speaker 1: the trips he financed were a mix of archaeological efforts
Speaker 1: to uncover cultural artifacts of the past and research into
Speaker 1: contemporary cultures. In nineteen twenty six, his museum moved to
Speaker 1: the Bronx because, just as when he had been a
Speaker 1: private collector, George had continued to acquire more than his
Speaker 1: space could fit. The new museum they built was larger,
Speaker 1: and it also had a garden of indigenous herbs, and
Speaker 1: his wife Thea oversaw that in nineteen twenty eight, George's
Speaker 1: good fortune and running this museum took a sharp turn. First,
Speaker 1: two of his most prominent supporters died the same week.
Speaker 1: Hi believed there would be a provision for the museum
Speaker 1: in their wills, and there were, but it was not
Speaker 1: enough to keep High's work going, at least not to
Speaker 1: the level that he had been. Following on this, the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine stock market crash further damaged High's financial
Speaker 1: standing enough that he had to make serious cutbacks. He
Speaker 1: laid off the majority of the museum's employees, choosing to
Speaker 1: run things himself. Eventually he would sell off pieces of
Speaker 1: the collection to keep the building going. He did continue
Speaker 1: to acquire items when he could. The museum wasn't really
Speaker 1: flat broke, it was just on a much tighter budget
Speaker 1: than it had been in its operational heyday. A decade
Speaker 1: into the museum running with its skeleton crew, George was
Speaker 1: contacted by the Headatsa tribe. Remember that medicine bundle we
Speaker 1: mentioned oile back. They wanted it back, and this wasn't
Speaker 1: a case where they were simply asking for repatriation, although
Speaker 1: that would have been entirely within their rights. But this
Speaker 1: was a request because the Hedatsa tribe needed their bundle back.
Speaker 1: It was what was called a waterbuster, meaning that it
Speaker 1: was part of their cultural practices to bring rain when
Speaker 1: it was needed, and at that point, the land that
Speaker 1: the Hadatsa lived on was experiencing a serious drought. Hi
Speaker 1: didn't want to give this back. He tried to barter
Speaker 1: for it, saying that if he could get a different
Speaker 1: item in return, he would consider returning it. He finally acquiesced,
Speaker 1: and there was apparently some fan unfair over returning this bundle.
Speaker 1: But when two members of the tribe traveled to New
Speaker 1: York for it, what they got were a couple of
Speaker 1: loose items that had allegedly been in the bundle. They
Speaker 1: had not been part of it, though. This is one
Speaker 1: of those events that described very differently depending on which
Speaker 1: biographer wrote about it. One of the earliest biographies about
Speaker 1: high which is the jay Alden Mason one that we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, It one hundred percent paints a picture of
Speaker 1: this being a very important and momentous occasion on which
Speaker 1: High did the right thing and the drought was lifted.
Speaker 1: That is not true, though the actual item was eventually
Speaker 1: repatriated to the Hidasi, but this was years and years
Speaker 1: after this deception. Yeah, he one hundred percent knew that
Speaker 1: he was not giving them their item back. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, Thea died on her birthday. George had spent
Speaker 1: twenty years with her as his constant companion and supporter,
Speaker 1: and after her death, he chose to give up the
Speaker 1: apartment they had lived in together and he moved into
Speaker 1: the University Club. That move was really not suitable. George
Speaker 1: did not like living at the club and he was lonely.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty six, he remarried to Jessica Peebles, who
Speaker 1: went by Jesse. That marriage did not have the staying
Speaker 1: power of his match with THEA. Four years later, Jesse
Speaker 1: filed for divorce in Nevada. Of course, that tickled me
Speaker 1: to no end when I saw the newspaper write up
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, this was in this within Nevada.
Speaker 1: She went to a divorce ranch. In the fall of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, George had a cerebral hemorrhage. He made
Speaker 1: enough of a recovery that he was soon back at work,
Speaker 1: but he was not able to keep up the schedule
Speaker 1: that he once had, and he could only work for
Speaker 1: a few hours at a time, and reportedly he could
Speaker 1: only go in a couple days a week at most.
Speaker 1: In the spring of nineteen fifty five, he had a
Speaker 1: series of strokes, and after that he was home bound.
Speaker 1: He died at home on January twentieth, eeteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: Over the course of his life, High had acquired pieces
Speaker 1: from cultures from the southern tip of South America all
Speaker 1: the way to the northern reaches of North America, an
Speaker 1: estimated one million artifacts, but without him to act as
Speaker 1: a steward, the future of this collection became unclear. He
Speaker 1: included a stipulation in his will that some items had
Speaker 1: to remain in New York. He also left the museum
Speaker 1: three million dollars. That sounds like a lot, but it
Speaker 1: was really not enough to keep things going. The museum
Speaker 1: struggled on for decades, constantly trying to regain its footing,
Speaker 1: until the entire collection was acquired by the Smithsonian in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, and the Smithsonian used that collection to
Speaker 1: form the National Museum of the American Indian and as
Speaker 1: part of the legislation that approved its formation, in funding,
Speaker 1: human remains in other articles that were acquired with highst
Speaker 1: collection had to be repatriated, and Native Americans had to
Speaker 1: be involved in setting up and running this museum as
Speaker 1: a partnership. The man chosen to head up the new
Speaker 1: entity was Rick West, who was Cheyenne. He had actually
Speaker 1: visited Hi'es Museum in nineteen fifty six when he was
Speaker 1: just a kid visiting New York, and according to West's account,
Speaker 1: he found the whole thing kind of disturbing because it
Speaker 1: seemed really odd to him that items belonging to Cheyenne
Speaker 1: people were sitting in a museum in New York. In
Speaker 1: a two thousand and four Washington Post article written by
Speaker 1: Bob Thompson, he makes an interesting point about Hige's collection
Speaker 1: that Holly hadn't quite considered in this way. Quote. In
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, when George high began seriously chasing
Speaker 1: Indian artifacts, it was widely assumed that Indians themselves would
Speaker 1: soon fade from the scene. Beside's an additional layer to
Speaker 1: all the considerations to be made about a white man
Speaker 1: collecting these artifacts. We've talked about the cultural genocide that
Speaker 1: had been part of the story of colonization and indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures in North America many times. The thought that George
Speaker 1: Gustav High saw it happening and perhaps thought he was
Speaker 1: preserving something that was ephemeral is an interesting one. This
Speaker 1: has also come up in other episodes about Indigenous history
Speaker 1: and Indigenous people in the like nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he did recognize that some of these cultures and
Speaker 1: tribes were waning, and there was kind of a clock
Speaker 1: ticking in terms of how long they might be around.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't really mean that he was doing this
Speaker 1: work from an altruistic point of view. That's evidenced by
Speaker 1: his treatment of the members of the Hidatsa tribe when
Speaker 1: they asked for their property back. George was once described
Speaker 1: by a colleague as someone who quote couldn't conscientiously leave
Speaker 1: a reservation until its entire population was practically naked. He
Speaker 1: wanted everything he could get his hands on, and that
Speaker 1: same colleague, who was quoted anonymously, also said of High, quote,
Speaker 1: he didn't give a hang about in individually, and he
Speaker 1: never seemed to have heard about their problems in present
Speaker 1: day society. George didn't buy Indian stuff in order to
Speaker 1: study the life of a people, because it never crossed
Speaker 1: his mind that that's what they were. He bought all
Speaker 1: those objects solely in order to own them for what
Speaker 1: purposes He never said so. While the idea of George
Speaker 1: High collecting these items to preserve information about a vanishing
Speaker 1: culture is certainly appealing, and on some level he might
Speaker 1: have thought he was doing that, but it's a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. In twenty sixteen, John Hayworth wrote
Speaker 1: an article for American Indian, which is the Smithsonian National
Speaker 1: Museum of the American Indian magazine, and which he talked
Speaker 1: about the legacy of the work George Gustav Hi did
Speaker 1: in his life. This was part of an article for
Speaker 1: the museum's hundredth birthday. And the mixed bag of High
Speaker 1: is that he doesn't seem to have been exactly sensitive
Speaker 1: to the cultures from which he was collecting. As we mentioned,
Speaker 1: he wanted to possess their items, but he didn't it
Speaker 1: really seem especially interested in truly knowing about them as
Speaker 1: a people. It was kind of like facts on a page,
Speaker 1: but his work and collections in the hands of Native
Speaker 1: American curators have led to a much deeper understanding of
Speaker 1: a lot of those cultures. Another way, his influence is
Speaker 1: still impacting anthropology. Is difficult to quantify, but there were
Speaker 1: a number of people who, because of their experience working
Speaker 1: on digs and research trips that he sponsored, got high
Speaker 1: ranking jobs in museums where they surely impacted the direction
Speaker 1: of anthropological research for the United States. Yeah, when he
Speaker 1: let go of all of his staff, where do you
Speaker 1: think all those people went to other museums? And even
Speaker 1: people that had never worked for him as staff but
Speaker 1: were kind of like on contracts with him that went
Speaker 1: on their resume because it was really impressive at the time.
Speaker 1: And now those are the people that were making policy
Speaker 1: in other places. So I feel like we can never
Speaker 1: fully appreciate how much we're still sifting out his coach
Speaker 1: to anthropology versus what would have happened if it were
Speaker 1: strictly academic. It's a tricky and fascinating one. He's an
Speaker 1: interesting figure. Again, like hard to unpick all of the things,
Speaker 1: But yeah, we'll talk more about that. And behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: I have a really funny to me listener mail, O
Speaker 1: good from our listener Laura, who may pronounce it Lara,
Speaker 1: hold on, let me check she doesn't say. I don't
Speaker 1: know if she pronounces it Laura or Lara, but suret ty,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy. I just listened to your episode about
Speaker 1: Ruby Payne Scott. I got way behind during the early
Speaker 1: days of the pandemic when I no longer had a commute,
Speaker 1: which is my prime listening time, and I am slowly
Speaker 1: getting caught up. Listen. No shame in that I have
Speaker 1: the same problem with everything audiobooks and podcasts. The discussion
Speaker 1: in that episode about Paine Scott keeping her marriage a
Speaker 1: secret reminded me of one of my favorite stories about
Speaker 1: my paternal grandmother, who was born in eighteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: She was a school teacher who continued teaching after she
Speaker 1: was married in nineteen ten, even though most school districts
Speaker 1: in New York State prohibited married women from teaching. In
Speaker 1: January nineteen fourteen, she enrolled in a teacher training institute
Speaker 1: for additional training, which would allow her to have longer
Speaker 1: lasting teaching credentials, but the institute's policy was that only
Speaker 1: single women could be admitted, so she signed her name
Speaker 1: without a miss or missus in front of it, and
Speaker 1: just let people assume she was a miss even though
Speaker 1: she went by her married name. Her plan was to
Speaker 1: complete the training in the fall, but she discovered over
Speaker 1: the summer that she was pregnant, so she informed the
Speaker 1: institute that she had to take a break, although she
Speaker 1: did not reveal the reason, but would return later to
Speaker 1: complete the training. She wrote an autobiography for the family,
Speaker 1: of which I have a copy, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that stands out to me about it is how
Speaker 1: some of her thoughts come across as if they were
Speaker 1: being written now. For example, when writing about my father's
Speaker 1: birth in January of nineteen fifteen, she notes that she
Speaker 1: received a baby and not a teaching certificate that month,
Speaker 1: and while she was very happy to have the baby,
Speaker 1: she still wanted the teaching certificate and vowed to get it,
Speaker 1: which she did. My subject line, which is where did
Speaker 1: you get that baby? Reverse is something that occurred after
Speaker 1: my father was born. My grandmother was writing on the
Speaker 1: trolley in Binghamton, New York, sitting with my father in
Speaker 1: her lap. She was spotted by an education higher up.
Speaker 1: My memory was that it was a superintendent, but having
Speaker 1: reviewed her autobiography before writing this email. I think it
Speaker 1: may have been someone connected with the Teacher Training Institute.
Speaker 1: The man, noticing the resemblance between my grandmother and dad,
Speaker 1: asked a shock miss, where did you get that baby,
Speaker 1: and my grandmother simply replied, Oh, I picked him up
Speaker 1: on Chestnut Street, which is where they lived. I'm the
Speaker 1: kid from my dad's second marriage, so I'm actually a
Speaker 1: gen xer like you two. I wrote you once before
Speaker 1: about my maternal great grandparents who had trained to be
Speaker 1: nurses under John Harvey Kellogg, which, much to my surprise,
Speaker 1: ended up on listener mail. So a second time. But
Speaker 1: I love this story. Like nobody told a lie nice,
Speaker 1: they just carefully withheld information. I love that when we
Speaker 1: got it, I picked him a bunch of us. Nut
Speaker 1: Street sounds great. Thank you so much for that email.
Speaker 1: It tickled me to no end, and I love that
Speaker 1: it's a little subversive without being in any way evil.
Speaker 1: If you have fun stories or anything else you'd like
Speaker 1: to write to us about, you can do that at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe
Speaker 1: to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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