{{short description|American anthropologist}} {{Infobox person | image = Frank Duveneck - Mary Cabot Wheelwright - Google Art Project.jpg |alt= young girl standing with blue sash. |caption = A portrait of Wheelwright at age four, painted by American artist Frank Duveneck |birth_date=October 2, 1878 |death_date={{death date and age|1958|7|29|1878|10|2}} |occupation=anthropologist and museum founder }} '''Mary Cabot Wheelwright''' (October 2, 1878 – July 29, 1958) was an American anthropologist and museum founder. She established the museum which is now called Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, in 1937<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amsw/sw55.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711114328/http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amsw/sw55.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 11, 2007|title=Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian—American Southwest—A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary|website=www.nps.gov|access-date=2016-05-13}}</ref> along with Hosteen Klah.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=A Quilt of Words: Women's Diaries, Letters & Original Accounts of Life in the Southwest, 1860–1960|last=Niederman|first=Sharon|publisher=Big Earth Publishing|year=1988|isbn=9781555660475|pages=137–152}}</ref>
== Early life and family == Wheelwright was born on October 2, 1878,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:DCBF-P1MM |title=search |url-access=registration |website=www.familysearch.org}}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=July 2021}} the only child of Andrew Cunningham Wheelwright and Sarah ("Sadie")<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://wheelwright.org/exhibitions/a-certain-fire-mary-cabot-wheelwright-collects-the-southwest/|title=» A Certain Fire: Mary Cabot Wheelwright Collects the Southwest|last=Inc.|first=Mindshare Studios|website=wheelwright.org|access-date=2016-05-12|archive-date=2016-09-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160924133241/https://wheelwright.org/exhibitions/a-certain-fire-mary-cabot-wheelwright-collects-the-southwest/|url-status=dead}}</ref> Perkins Cabot Wheelwright.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|url=http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/ark:/99166/w6kj3prw|title=Wheelwright, Mary C.|website=socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu|access-date=2016-05-12}}</ref> She was raised in a wealthy household and the Cabot family was part of the Boston upper class.<ref name=":2" /> Her family traced its ancestry to 18th-century merchants who had become wealthy through shipping.<ref name=":1" /> Her great-grandfathers worked as commission agents and her maternal grandfather made his wealth through "slavery, sugar, and rum," also building China's first trading outpost, where he imported silks and opium.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|url=http://www.abqjournal.com/111973/treasures.html|title=Southwest Treasures|last=Writer|first=Kathaleen Roberts {{!}} Journal Staff|website=www.abqjournal.com|access-date=2016-05-13}}</ref> Mary's mother, Sarah, was close friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson,<ref name=":1" /> who often visited the family's home.<ref name=":0" /> As a child, Wheelwright was raised in the tradition of the Transcendentalists and the Unitarian Church.<ref name=":1" /> In 1882, at the age of four years old, she posed for a portrait by artist Frank Duveneck.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/498/Mary_Cabot_Wheelwright|title=Brooklyn Museum: American Art: Mary Cabot Wheelwright|website=www.brooklynmuseum.org|access-date=2016-05-13}}</ref> She was well-traveled, visiting Europe, Egypt, and California with her parents, who were "protective" and raised Wheelwright as how a friend described as "growing up in cotton wool."<ref name=":1" />
For 40 years, Wheelwright remained the "dutiful Victorian daughter."<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal|title=Dictionary of American Biography|journal=Science|volume=70|issue=1805|last=Whitehill|first=Walter|year=1929|pages=121–122|bibcode=1929Sci....70..121P|doi=10.1126/science.70.1805.121|pmid=17813847}}</ref> She devoted herself to "good works, particularly a settlement-house music school in the South End of Boston."<ref name=":4" /> As the heiress of a family trust, she had significant income that would support her throughout her life but lacked control of the capital, which was intended to protect her from "fortune-hunting suitors" but made her unable to endow the museum she would later found as she wished.<ref name=":4" />
== Life and work in the American Southwest == At age 40, after both her parents had died, Wheelwright journeyed to the American Southwest, where she "found and embraced a more primitive type of civilization, more adventuresome and more exciting than the safety of Boston."<ref name=":2" /> In Alcalde, New Mexico, she stayed on a ranch.<ref name=":2" /> In addition, she traveled to the Four Corners region and Navajo reservation.<ref name=":2" /> There, she developed an interest in Navajo religion.<ref name=":2" /> In 1921, Wheelwright was introduced to Hosteen Klah, a Navajo medicine man and singer, who was worried about preserving traditional Navajo religious practices.<ref name=":2" /> The two developed a friendship and began working together to preserve Navajo religious practices, with Klah sharing details about Navajo ceremonies with Wheelwright, who recorded and translated them.<ref name=":2" /> While at the time, there was a taboo in the Navajo community against replicating ceremonies, Klah's fear of the knowledge of their culture's traditions being lost led them to share the information with Wheelwright.<ref name=":0" />
Throughout the next years, Wheelwright spent time traveling the world, living in the eastern United States, and living in Alcalde.<ref name=":2" /> In 1940, she traveled to India with the goal of finding symbols related to the ones found in Navajo art.<ref name=":0" /> She also visited Europe, Greece, Egypt, and China.<ref name=":0" /> She continued to record information about Navajo ceremonials given by Klah and by another 58 medicine men, and collected reproductions of ceremonial sandpaintings in various media.<ref name=":2" />
In 1923, Wheelwright purchased the Los Luceros Ranch near Alcalde.<ref name=":4" /> She befriended Maria Chabot, who managed the ranch for 20 years, and later gifted the ranch to Chabot.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/us/maria-chabot-87-dies-began-indian-market-and-was-an-o-keeffe-associate.html|title=Maria Chabot, 87, Dies; Began Indian Market and Was an O'Keeffe Associate|last=Martin|first=Douglas|date=2001-07-15|newspaper=The New York Times|issn=0362-4331|access-date=2016-05-13}}</ref>
In 1937, Wheelwright and Klah established the House of Navajo Religion in Santa Fe.<ref name=":2" /> The name was later changed to the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art in 1939.<ref name=":0" /> In 1942 the museum published ''Navajo Creation Myth - the Story of the Emergence'' by Hosteen Klah, Recorded by Mary C. Wheelwright.<ref name=book>[https://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/nav/ncm/index.htm "Navajo Creation Myth."] ''Sacred Texts.'' (retrieved 17 Dec 2019)</ref> In 1977, the museum was renamed the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.<ref name=":2" />
Wheelwright wrote an autobiography, titled ''Journey Towards Understanding'', in 1957.<ref name=":0" /> Ultimately, it went unpublished during her lifetime.<ref name=":0" /> An excerpt was published in ''A Quilt of Words: Women's Diaries, Letters & Original Accounts of Life in the Southwest, 1860–1960'' in 1988.<ref name=":0" />
In addition to traveling, Wheelwright enjoyed sailing.<ref name=":0" /> She spent summers on the coast of Maine and lived alone for a time in a shipmaster's cottage on Sutton Island.<ref name=":0" />
== Later life and death == Wheelwright continued to serve as director of the museum for the rest of her life.<ref name=":2" /> She died on July 29, 1958<ref name=":2" /> at the age of 79 in her home in Maine.<ref name=":3" />
== References == {{reflist|30em}}
== Bibliography ==
===Archival collections===
*Mary C. Wheelwright Autobiography and Related Materials, 1979–1992, MS 1-1-128a, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, NM. Archival collection finding aid https://rmoa.unm.edu/docviewer.php?docId=nmu1mss773sc.xml#idp97728 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210515162815/https://rmoa.unm.edu/docviewer.php?docId=nmu1mss773sc.xml#idp97728 |date=2021-05-15 }}
===Primary works===
* Klah, Hosteen and Wheelwright, Mary C. ''Navajo Creation Myth - the Story of the Emergence'' Santa Fe, N.M.: Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art, 1942. Print. Navajo religion series, vol. I. [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.89349/page/n11] *Wheelwright, Mary C. ''Hail Chant and Water Chant.'' Santa Fe, N.M.: Museum of Navajo ceremonial art, 1946. Print. Navajo religion series, vol. II. *Wheelwright, Mary C., Yoh Hatráli., and Beyal. Begay. Eagle Catching Myth. [Rev. ed.]. Santa Fe, N.M.: Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art, 1962. Print. Santa Fe (N.M.). Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art. Bulletin, no. 3 (1962); Santa Fe (N.M.), no. 3 (1962).
===Secondary works=== *Poling-Kempes, Lesley. Ladies of the Canyons : A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2015. {{ISBN|9780816524945}}
== Further reading == * Armstrong, Leatrice A., [https://wheelwright.org/product/mary-wheelwright/ ''Mary Wheelwright: Her Book''], Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 2016.
== External links == * [https://wheelwright.org/ Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wheelwright, Mary Cabot}} Category:1878 births Category:1958 deaths Category:American anthropologists Category:American art collectors Category:Museum founders Category:People from Boston Category:American women anthropologists Category:Writers from Massachusetts