A Mystery in the Archives:
The Historiography of Denial, Henrietta Schmerler’s Rape and Murder, and Anthropology’s Project of Prevention
In July 1931, a young student of anthropology at Columbia University named Henrietta Schmerler was raped and murdered while researching the White Mountain Apache in Arizona. Although anthropologists have for decades repeated a received narrative that uses idealized fieldwork tropes to blame Schmerler for her own rape and murder, a careful historiographical analysis reveals most scholarly work on Schmerler’s case relies on archival sources that have been deliberately censored or else on unfounded assertions about Apache culture. By investigating Schmerler’s death and treating historical archives as crime scenes, this article demonstrates how archival restrictions have prevented an honest, evidence-based reckoning with the legacies of American anthropology’s founding figures, untangles the origins of anthropology’s belief that rape in the field can be prevented, and argues that the denial Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Gladys Reichard display upon hearing that an Indigenous person might have raped and murdered Schmerler still haunts anthropology today.
