Mary Ellicot Arnold

Mary Ellicott Arnold (1876^[1] – 1968) was an American social activist, teacher and writer best known for In the Land of the Grasshopper Song, the memoir she wrote with Mabel Reed (1876–1963) on their experiences as Bureau of Indian Affairs employees, 1908-1909.

Life and work

A native of Staten Island, New York, Arnold moved at an early age to Somerville, New Jersey where she began her childhood friendship with Mabel Reed, a companionship that later matured into a life partnership. Arnold studied business at Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, and agriculture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. As young women, Arnold and Reed devoted five years (1901–1906) to farming a fifty-five acre plot ^[2]. They next gained experience as urban organizers in New York City. Their employer, City and Suburban Homes Company, was a philanthropic organization building affordable, decent housing for the working poor ^[3].

When Arnold and Reed accepted positions as so-called field matrons on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in the Klamath River Valley of Northern California, they were charged to exert a “civilizing influence” upon the fewer than eight hundred members of the Karok nation, a vagueness they were to exploit to their own benefit and that of the Karok ^[2].

Arnold and Reed lacked the social and racial prejudices of the era. Although the Bureau of Indian Affairs expected them to enforce white cultural values, they instead accepted Karok practices and established a close working friendship with Essie, a native woman with three husbands ^[2]. They were eager, Arnold said, not to be “ladies—the kind who have Sunday schools, and never say a bad word, and rustle around in a lot of silk petticoats” ^[4].

In the decades following their breakthrough experience of independent living and community education among the Karok, Arnold and Reed further developed their skills as organizers and activists in cooperative housing, credit unions, adult education, rural development, and Indian rights. Arnold worked in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania. She was an active Quaker and a finance officer with the Women’s International League for Peace and Justice ^[5].

Arnold’s papers and correspondence are housed at Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College and the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

In 2003, playwright Lauren Wilson adapted In the Land of the Grasshopper Song for the stage as a musical comedy, with music by Tim Gray, for production by the Dell’Arte theater troupe ^[6].

Footnotes

1. ^ Georgi-Findlay, Brigitte. "The West as a Female Mission." In "The Frontiers of Women's Writing". University of Arizona Press, 1996.
2. ^ ^{a b c} Carter, Patricia."’Completely discouraged': Women teachers’ resistance in the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, 1900-1910." Frontiers (15.3)
3. ^ Gray, Christopher. "Streetscapes: City and Suburban Homes." New York Times. 3 July 1988.
4. ^ Faderman, Lillian. To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America—A History. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. 157.
5. ^ "Background Note." Inventory of the Mary Ellicott Arnold Papers, 1888-1970. Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA (www.swarthmore.edu/Library/friends)
6. ^ "Company/Ensemble Bios." Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater. (www.dellarte.com)

External links

• The official California Legacy Project website
• Inventory of the Mary Ellicott Arnold Papers, 1888-1970
• Company/Ensemble Bios from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater

Persondata
Name	Arnold, Mary Ellicot
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1867
Place of birth
Date of death	1968
Place of death	Reserve Mines, Nova Scotia, Canada