Summary of Research on the Collection

1930 - Preliminary Research 

While Curator at State Historical Society of Colorado, George Woodbury begins research on hair from ancestral remains. The results are published in Woodbury, George 1930. A Preliminary Note on the Investigation of Indian Hair. Colorado Magazine Vol. 8, no. 2 (pp. 47-48). 

1931 - Collecting and Research

After preliminary research, George Woodbury embarks on a project to study Native American hair and in doing so begins collecting hair samples from living individuals and from ancestral remains located in museum collections. Woodbury creates glass slides of approximately 250 hair samples for microscopic study. 

1932 - Collecting and Research

George and Edna Woodbury publish the results of their research in Woodbury, George and Woodbury, Edna T., 1932 “Differences between certain of the North American Indian Tribes as shown by a Microscopical Study of their Head Hair.” State Historical Society of Colorado, State Museum, Denver, Colorado.

1933 - End of Active Collecting

Although the Woodburys continued to receive more hair samples after the 1932 publication, these samples are not included in their further studies.

1935 - Donation to Peabody Museum 

George comes to Harvard to study under Earnest Hooton and brings the collection of hair    samples with him; he does not study the hair samples at Harvard. George Woodbury donates the hair samples to the Peabody Museum in 1935.

1938 - Woodbury leaves Harvard

1970 - Research

Daniel Hrdy, Harvard undergraduate student conducts microscopic study of 30 Sioux hair clippings resulting in an undergraduate thesis and subsequent publications (1970-1973).

1971 - Research

Adon A. Gordus, Department of Chemistry at The University of Michigan, was sent samples of samples from 65 individuals from New Mexico, Samoa and Alaska, for his research on air pollution which involved chemical analysis of the hair samples (1971-1973).

1977 - Research

Daniel Hrdy and colleagues at Harvard Medical School published a study of protein variants in keratin that included chemical analysis of 60 “New Mexico Indian” hair samples.

George and Edna Woodbury

Between 1930-1933, anthropologist George Edward Woodbury, Curator of the State Historical Society of Colorado, was researching potential connections between Indigenous communities to study human variation and support early anthropological theories around the peopling of North America. To build this collection of hair samples, Woodbury reached out to other anthropologists and archaeologists, as well as administrators at a wide variety of U.S. Indian reservations, U.S. Indian boarding schools, and Canadian hospitals as well as missionaries worldwide. He collected approximately 1,400 samples from Asia, Central America, North America, Oceania, and South America.

Publications:

• Woodbury, George 1930. A Preliminary Note on the Investigation of Indian Hair. Colorado Magazine Vol. 8, no. 2 (pp. 47-48).  
• Woodbury, George and Woodbury, Edna T., 1932 “Differences between certain of the North American Indian Tribes as shown by a Microscopical Study of their Head Hair.” State Historical Society of Colorado, State Museum, Denver, Colorado.  
   

Professor Adon Gordus, University of Michigan

In 1971 the Museum sent a selection of strands from 65 hair clippings from the Woodbury Collection to Professor Adon Gordus, Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan to use in his work on air pollution. The clippings were from Samoan (19), Pueblo (8) and Alaskan (38) individuals. The museum has contacted the University of Michigan to ask them to investigate whether there are any remaining samples from this study. The work seems only to have been described in a published report from a conference at the National Science Foundation. 

Dr. Daniel Hrdy began his research as a senior honors thesis in the Department of Anthropology. He went onto publish this work in the Journal of Physical Anthropology as well as to collaborate with colleagues from the Harvard Medical School. 

Hrdy, Daniel B., and Harvard University. Department of Anthropology. 1971. “Keratins and Hair Form Variation”. Cambridge, Mass.

This thesis was a general study of the extent and sources of human hair variation. The author studied seven different populations from Bougainville (Solomon Islands), Malaita (Solomon Islands), East Africa, Northwest Europe (Harvard undergraduates), Sioux (adult, male, from the Peabody Museum collections), Ifugao, Philippines (from Peabody Museum collections), and Japanese (workers at Massachusetts General Hospital). There is no mention of the specific Peabody collection that was the source of the Sioux hair, but given the detail of “adult, male” it is almost certainly from the Woodbury collection.

The author discusses the biochemical composition and the gross morphological aspects of hair, primarily head hair. He conducted biochemical and biophysical analysis to determine if racial differences existed at various structural levels. The reported results of these biochemical and biophysical analyses strongly suggest these were not performed on the Sioux hair samples, but on the Japanese, Solomon Islands, European, and African hair. The author attempted to find the most basic level of racial difference of head hair but did not find any. The last section discusses attempts to delimit variation of hair form quantitatively. The thesis included hair sample medulla photographs, although none of the Sioux hair samples.

Hrdy, Daniel. 1973. “Quantitative Hair Form Variation in Seven Populations.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 39 (1): 7–17.

This published paper is from Hrdy’s 1971 undergraduate thesis and aims “to apply quantitative and statistical methods to the description of cranial hair form of several different populations in order to understand the relations among the populations and the nature of hair form itself.” (p.8). Using the whole existing length of each hair he placed them between glass slides to measure: average diameter; medullation; scale count; kinking; average curvature; ratio of maximum to minimum curvature; crimp; and ratio of natural to straight length (p.9). The description of the Woodbury samples used in research is as follows: “Sioux. From a large collection in the Peabody Museum, ca. 1930. Population sample, 30; individual sample, 40.” (p.9). This indicates the use of a single hair from 30 individuals, and 40 hairs from a single individual in the study.

Hrdy, Daniel B., Howard. P Baden, Loretta D. Lee, Joseph Kubilus, and Kenneth W. Ludwig. 1977. “Frequency of an Electrophoretic Variant of Hair a Keratin in Human Populations” in the American Journal of Human Genetics 29: 98-100.

Keratin is a protein that is important for the structure and health of hair and nails. The authors were interested in a variant in the structure of this protein which earlier studies (that did not include use of Peabody collections) had suggested was the result of variation in a particular gene. This short paper reports on research about the frequency of this variant in populations from around the world, which was found to be most common in populations of European origin (“Caucasian”). The description of the Woodbury samples, which included incorrect details is as follows: “New Mexico Indian samples were collected in 1930 by the Peabody Museum (Woodbury Collection)” (p.98). There was a specific mention of a 14-year-old male of the Laguna Tribe who may have had some Caucasian ancestry (p.99).

The authors used the common laboratory technique of gel electrophoresis to detect the variant. This process begins by extracting the protein by placing a small piece of hair in a solution. The protein extract is then added to another solution that contains an enzyme that cuts the protein into pieces. This solution is placed at one end of a gel and, using an electric current, the molecules are pulled through the gel. Different sizes travel different distances (smaller pieces are pulled through further than larger), which are visible as bands on the gel. When the variant is present there is a piece of protein that is a particular size and if there is a band at that specific point on the gel then the keratin has the variant.

The other authors were based at the Dermatology Department of the Harvard Medical School. Hrdy, Baden and others went on to publish other studies but none of these reported use of clippings from the Woodbury collection.