Spider Woman A Story of Navajo Weavers & Chanters

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934. First edition. 287pp; + 28 half-tones photographs of the Navajo women at work and one double page full color image of a double sand painting; original red cloth stamped in gold gilt, buff jacket printed in title and author in red with traditional Navajo design black and red and buff on front and spine of jacket, back panel with list of Macmillan books, book a bit soiled, spine dimmed especially at top 1/4 inch, jacket slightly chipped along edges and spine darkened, neat ex-libris on front free endpaper, about very good copy of one the key references on traditional Navajo weaving which has been reprinted many times since this first printing.
Gladys Amanda Reichard (1893-1955) anthropologist, was for many years the head of the only undergraduate department of anthropology in a woman's college (Barnard) in the U.S. One of Franz Boas' star pupils, her concentration on Navajo studies resulted in SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NAVAHO INDIANS (1928), HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES (1938), MELANESIAN DESIGN (1933) NAVAJO SHEPHERD AND WEAVER (1936), and NAVAJO RELIGION (1950). SPIDER WOMAN was, however, her ground-breaking book. "Told from the point of view of the weaver, it is both a record of what a woman weaver thinks and does and one of the first good accounts of the field work experience." NAW, THE MODERN PERIOD, p. 573.