ABSTRACT

The Depression and then the Second World War dominated everyday life during the 1930s and 1940s. In December 1920, a committee of the National Research Council Division of Psychology and Anthropology chaired by Clark Wissler issued a confidential report recommending six areas for future anthropological research. The hundred or so anthropologists hired by the government after 1933 were typically employed by a work relief agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or the Department of Agriculture. The anthropologists of the Applied Anthropology Unit increasingly found themselves in an untenable position. A number of anthropology students in American universities during the late 1930s also belonged to various anti-fascist organizations. The cultural anthropologists employed by the federal government in the 1930s had to confront two major problems: the social organization of various American Indian tribes, and the changes that were taking place or had occurred in the past among native peoples as a result of assimilation and acculturation.