(b Newton, MA, 14 Nov 1850; d Forest Glen, MD, 31 May 1930). American ethnologist. He studied biology at Harvard (AB 1875, PhD 1877), and later studied at Leipzig and the University of Arizona. He was field director of the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition (1889–94), and, commissioned by Mary Hemenway, tested the value of the phonograph for fieldwork in March 1890 by recording songs of the Passamaquoddy Indians in Maine. These were soon followed by his Zuni (1890) and Hopi Pueblo (1891) recordings which were then analysed by Benjamin Ives Gilman. He was responsible for the Hemenway Exhibition at the Madrid exhibition of 1892 commemorating Columbus's discovery of America, and consequently received many honours. As a result of his work in Madrid, Hemenway later commissioned recordings by Gilman. From 1895 to 1918 Fewkes worked as an ethnologist at the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, DC, becoming chief in 1918, and remaining there until his retirement in 1928.
Fewkes was the first man to record exotic music for the benefit of science. His most important musical contributions are found in the corpus of his lifelong ethnological studies among the Pueblo Indians in Arizona. His legacy to ethnomusicology lies not only in his articles on music but also in the historical value of his many writings on ritual observances and ceremonials accompanied by music and dance, and those on folklore and language relevant to the study of musical instruments and texts. A man with changing careers, Fewkes undertook extensive fieldwork in ethnology, archaeology and invertebrate zoology, and was a prolific writer.
‘A Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folklore’, Journal of American Folklore, iii (1890), 257–80
‘On the Use of the Phonograph in the Study of Languages of American Indians’, Science, xv (1890), 267–9
‘On the Use of the Phonograph among the Zuni Indians’, American Naturalist, xxiv (1890), 687–91
‘Additional Studies of Zuni Songs and Rituals with the Phonograph’, ibid., 1094–8
The Snake Ceremonials at Walpi (Boston, 1894/R)
‘The Walpi Flute Observance’, Journal of American Folklore, vii (1894), 265–87
‘Tusayan Flute and Snake Ceremonies’, 19th Annual Report of Bureau of American Ethnology (1900), 853–1011
‘Fewkes, Jesse Walter’, The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, ed. J.T. White, xv (New York, 1916/R), 32–3
F. Densmore: ‘The Study of Indian Music in the Nineteenth Century’, American Anthropologist, new ser., xxix (1927), 77–86
‘Fewkes, Jesse Walter’, Who Was Who in America, i (Chicago, 1942)
C. Haywood: A Bibliography of North American Folklore and Folksong (New York, 1951, 2/1961)
B. Nettl: North American Indian Musical Styles (Philadelphia, 1954)
J. Hickerson: Annotated Bibliography of North American Indian Music North of Mexico (diss., Indiana U., 1961)
N.M. Judd: The Bureau of American Ethnology: a Partial History (Norman, OK, 1967)
SUE CAROLE DeVALE/R