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Dr. Morris Edward Opler, cultural anthropologist and specialist in Apache ethnology, died on May 13, 1996. Dr. Opler was born May 16, 1907 in Buffalo, New York. He received a B.A. in Sociology in 1929 at the University of Buffalo, an M.A. from the University of Buffalo in Anthropology in 1930, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1933. Edward Sapir served as the chairman of Opler's Ph.D. committee until he (Sapir) left Chicago for a position at Yale University. Sapir's influence on Opler was reflected in the latter's enduring theoretical concern with the individual in relation to culture. This concern can be seen most clearly in Opler's Apache Odyssey: A Journey Between Two Worlds (1969), a biographical narrative told by a Mescalero Apache man, "Chris."
After Sapir's departure, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown became chairman of Dr. Opler's dissertation committee. In 1931, Opler began fieldwork on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in south-central New Mexico. This fieldwork was part of Ruth Benedict's summer field school sponsored by the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Among other participants in this project were Regina Flannery, Jules Henry, Harry Hoijer, and Sol Tax. In 1932, Opler completed his dissertation, "An Analysis of Mescalero and Chiricahua Apache Social Organization in the Light of Their Systems of Relationship."
From 1932 until 1937, Dr. Opler conducted fieldwork with various Apache peoples in New Mexico. Among the publications that arose from this research were Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians (1938), Myths and...