| The Southwestern writer Frank Waters (1902--1995) published twenty-seven fiction and non-fiction books, along with numerous screen plays, editorials for a bilingual (English/Spanish) newspaper, book reviews, and magazine articles. As an independent scholar, his work reflects his intellectual interests in art, ethnology, anthropology, history, philosophy, Americana, comparative religion, Jungian psychology, and Southwestern native cultures. This dissertation will emphasize Waters' educational and life experiences that resulted in his most widely read and controversial work, Book of the Hopi (1963).; Growing up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to a part-Cheyenne father and Anglo mother stimulated Waters lifelong interest in Indian culture and his personal search for identity. Before Frank's father died he acquainted him with the Utes, Arapahoes, Cheyenne, and Navajo. Therefore, the beginning chapters detail his childhood in Colorado Springs, his travels, his early writing career, and his arrival in Taos, New Mexico, in the late thirties. Waters was influenced by Taos' avant-garde art colony and the tri-cultural (Hispanic, Indian, Euro-American) frontier atmosphere. His dynamic relationship with socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan and her Taos Pueblo Indian husband Tony Lujan is described. In addition, Waters' works The Man Who Killed the Deer (1942), The Colorado (1946), and Masked Gods: Navaho and Pueblo Ceremonialism (1950) are summarized to demonstrate his knowledge of Indian ceremonialism, and to establish his credentials that inspired the Hopi Indian Oswald White Bear Frederick to invite Waters to write Book of the Hopi.; The dissertation then narrates the dynamics between the principals of the project: Frank Waters who wrote the book, Oswald White Bear Fredericks who gathered the information, the Charles Ulrick and Josephine Bay Foundation that financed the project, and the Southwest Museum that acted as banker. The historic interest in the Hopis, the major responses of the world-wide readership of Book of the Hopi and the controversy surrounding the work are examined. Finally, with a brief discussion of Waters' career after the Book of the Hopi, the dissertation concludes with a reflection on Waters' literary importance to the Southwest. |
