Louis Albert Hieb

Louis Albert Hieb was born April 11, 1939, in Carlsbad, New Mexico, son of David Livingston Hieb and Gertrude E. E. Reedholm. His father was a career National Park Service employee, and his mother was a nurse. Louis lived and worked in several NPS

areas. He graduated from Fort Laramie High School in Wyoming and attended Grinnell College (A.B., 1961), Yale University Divinity School (M.Div., 1965), Rutgers-The State University (M.L.S., 1968) and Princeton University (PhD., 1972).

His interest in history and anthropology began with his father’s appointment as Superintendent at Fort Laramie National Historic Site in 1947, where he was surrounded by the remains of the 19th century military post and exposed to the researches of historians and archaeologists working there. In 1948, at the age of 9, he

found a roughly 10,000-year-old Folsom projectile point, and during the next few years he found thousand s more relics, such as army buttons, Indian trade beads, and more arrowheads.

During the summers of 1958 and 1959, he worked on survey and road crews in Rocky Mountain National Park, which became a place to live, work and visit throughout his life. While working on Trail Ridge Road, he helped transplant blocks of tundra to help sustain the fragile environment. This experience provided the background for his efforts decades later to restore the native vegetation in the Sonoran Desert while living in Tucson.

During the following three summers, he was a Ranger at Mesa Verde National Park, where he explored the canyons on days off and began collecting Navajo tapestries and Pueblo pottery as well as books the history and cultures of the American Southwest.

In 1969 he began graduate work in anthropology at Princeton University where his mentor and dissertation advisor was Alfonso Ortiz from Okay Owingeh Pueblo in New Mexico. After nearly 18 months fieldwork on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona, he

completed his dissertation, The Hopi Ritual Clown: Life As It Should Not Be.

Between 1971 and his retirement in 2004, Hieb taught anthropology at Moorhead State University, Washington State University, and worked in rare book and manuscript collections in libraries at the University of Arizona, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Washington. As an anthropologist, he specialized in vernacular architecture, the social scientific study of religion, and the history of anthropological theory. He was an advisor to undergraduate majors in anthropology at Washington State University and served on many M.A. and Ph.D. committees. He is remembered for his intellectual generosity and love of learning.

During his academic career and continuing through his retirement, Hieb wrote or edited over forty articles and books on the Hopi, Navajo, Zuni and Hispanic peoples of New Mexico and Arizona, most recently The Doctor Danced with Us: Jeremiah Sullivan and

the Hopi, 1881-1888 (2018), and the Hopi portion of Zuni, Hopi, Copan: Early Anthropology at Harvard, 1890-1893 (2003). In addition, he has compiled bibliographies of the 19th century military novelist Captain Charles King, the mystery writer Tony

Hillerman, and the environmentalist Charles Bowden.

An avid reader of mysteries and a book collector, Hieb developed near complete collections of the works of John Steinbeck, Hillerman, and King, as well as contemporary writers Sally Rooney, Claire Keegan, and Eleanor Catton. He donated his collection of the first editions of all the fiction and non-fiction of Captain Charles King to the Cline Library at Northern Arizona University.

His education was supported by a Younkers Honor Scholarship at Grinnell College and a Rockefeller Theological Fellowship at Yale Divinity School. He was a University Fellow at Princeton University and received a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Ethnic Studies as well as research funds from the American Philosophical Society.

Louis Hieb is survived by his loving wife of 50 years, Sharon Aller, and their daughter, Caroline Bulloch (Andrew), Beaverton,OR; Sharon’s two children, Jay Aller, Issaquah,WA, & Joyce Frailey (Mike), Longmont, CO; his first wife, Susan Browning Roberts, Moscow, ID, & their sons, Matthew Hieb (Lee), Hartford, CT, & John Hieb (Shelby), Durango, CO; his sister, Rena Murman (Earll), Port Townsend, WA; three grandchildren, Maddie & Merryn Bulloch and Jack Frailey.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to Fred Hutch Cancer Care: secure.fredhutch.org; or the Northwest Kidney Center: nwkidney.org.