Gordon Marsh

[ROOD DAVID S]

Lance --
	I actually had some correspondence with Marsh after he retired,
but it's all lost now.  I am pretty sure that he did indeed retire to a
Russian Orthodox institution somewhere in the southwest.  His Orthodox
name was Rev. Priestmonk Innocent.  Are you sure that the sequence of
events was from Boas' student to Orthodox priest?  Somehow I had the idea
that he was already a Priest when he was doing his Chiwere work and
studying with Boas.
	Be careful, too, about the Whitman assertion.  I have always
believed that the copy of the Whitman manuscript in the Marsh files was
exactly that -- a copy of what Whitman wrote.  For one thing, the
typewriter on which that is written looks quite different from the one
Marsh used otherwise.  When I found the "missing page" from the Whitman
ms. years ago, I intended to write a postscript to to the Voelgelin-Harris
publication, but I never got around to it.
	BEcause of these two notions, either or both of which may be from
my imagination or from some "folklore" I picked up along the way, I would
add my voice to those who encourage you to try to write the biography.  I
will look for my correspondence, too, but probably not til after
Christmas.

	David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
Campus Box 295
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Mon, 26 Nov 2001, Louanna Furbee wrote:

> >Hi Lance,  Seconding Bob's comments, I think you should put together
> >what you turn up into an article or report.  I think that it was
> >someplace in Texas where Marsh retired (maybe to a Greek Orthodox
> >(Russian Orthodox?) home for retired clergy?  Dave Rogles tried to
> >run him down at one time.  You might try him.  I don't hae his
> >address, but I think Jill Davidson Greer does.  Her e-mail is JGreer
> ><jgreer at mvip.net>.  Good luck.  Louanna
>
>
>
> >Lance,
> >
> >Looks like you've done more research on him than anybody else I know.  John
> >Koontz found, I think, that he had gone to a retirement home in the SW.
> >That's where he probably died.  Why don't YOU write up his bio?  You might
> >even find people in Alaska who knew him there.
> >
> >Bob
> >
> >
> >>I was wondering who out there has done research on the life of Gordon
> >Marsh, Chiwere scholar extraordinaire. I remember seeing a short
> >biography on him in an article in a book of biographies of either
> >linguists, anthropologists, or scholars of American Indians. I
> >photocopied the article, but unfortunately it as well as all of my
> >research materials remain in storage in the lower 48 (I am in Alaska
> >now). I also learned more about him in a series of letters with some
> >scholars (Nancy Lurie? Mildred Mott?). I have microfilms of his work
> >(also in storage) from the American Philosophical Society, which was
> >done by Marsh in several seasons of fieldwork in the 1930s-- he even had
> >a special typewriter created for it. His major professor at Columbia was
> >Franz Boas. Unfortunately as he did his fieldwork, Boas retired, so
> >Marsh lost his major prof. Boas had been interested in collecting
> >everything Native American, but the new paradigm in anthropology and at
> >Columbia was more along the lines of social theory, and Marsh could not
> >find anyone on the faculty who was interested in what he was doing. In
> >frustration, Marsh turned in his typewriter, his notes, etc. to the
> >American Philosophical Society, and went to Alaska to become a Russian
> >Orthodox monk! Years later he went to the southwest, Arizona and/or
> >Texas. I received an email from some former parishioners who remembered
> >attending his Masses in Texas, where he is said to have died in the
> >1970s or 1980s.
> >
> >As I was doing my research, the thing that really bummed me out was
> >finding that William Whitman published Marsh's work verbatim as his own
> >in 1947. In any case this is the impression I get, since Whitman did not
> >list Marsh as a coauthor, the work is verbatim from Marsh's fieldnotes,
> >Whiteman only acknowledges Marsh in an offhand manner, he uses Marsh'
> >orthography, and in fact the last page of Whitman's article is
> >incomplete... with the rest of the page still to be found in Marsh! At
> >most Whitman should be listed as the editor of that work, not the
> >author.
> >
> >Anyway, I would like to know if anyone has followed Marsh's work (Dr.
> >Furbee? Anyone?). I would like to see an article or something done to
> >set the scholarly record straight, not to bash Whitman but to give Marsh
> >proper recognition. I am sure all scholars know how important this is,
> >and how if the same thing happened to you, you would like if someone
> >eventually set the record straight for you.
> >
> >Lance Foster
>
> --
> Prof. N. Louanna Furbee
> Department of Anthropology
> 107 Swallow Hall
> University of Missouri
> Columbia, MO  65211 USA
> Telephones: 573/882-9408 (office)
> 	   573/882-4731 (department)
> 	   573/446-0932 (home)
> 	   573/884-5450 (fax)
> E-mail:  FurbeeL at missouri.edu
>