Elisabeth J. Tooker Fund

A bequest from Elisabeth J. Tooker established this fund in 2005 for anthropology materials at the University of Pennsylvania Library.

Dr. Tooker was an anthropologist specializing in the study of North American Indian cultures and history and in the religions of non-Western peoples. She received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Radcliffe College and M.A. from the University of Arizona. She did field work among the Indians of the American Southwest and the Iroquois of New York State. In 1965, Tooker accepted a position at Temple University, where she remained for the rest of her career.

From the time of her move to Philadelphia, Tooker began increasingly to concentrate her research on the history and culture of Indians in the Northeast, and particularly the Iroquois. Among her several books are An ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649; The Indians of the Northeast: a critical bibliography, and Lewis H. Morgan on Iroquois Material Culture, along with a number of edited volumes.

A member of many professional anthropological organizations (including the American Ethnological Society, the American Society for Ethnohistory, the Conference on Iroquois Research, the Northeastern Anthropological Association, and the Philadelphia Anthropological Society, her success in the profession earned recognition as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recipient of the Cornplanter Medal for Iroquois Research.

Dr. Tooker served as a consultant to the exhibit American Indian Life, 1776-1976 at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and was a Consulting Scholar for the University of Pennsylvania's University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Her generosity will benefit scholars for generations to come at the University of Pennsylvania Library.