H. Otley Beyer
Henry Otley Beyer (July 13, 1883-1966) was an American anthropologist, who spent most of his adult life in the Philippines teaching Filipinos and other scholars about their Philippine indigenous culture. He is known as the Father of Philippine Anthropology.
Beyer was born in Edgewood, Iowa to a pioneer family of Bavarian origin and developed an interest in the Philippines when he visited the Philippine exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exhibition in St Louis, Missouri in 1904.
After graduating with a master's degree in chemistry from Denver University in the following year, he volunteered to teach in the Philippines. His first years in the Philippines were spent as a teacher in the Cordillera Mountains on Luzon island, home of the Ifugao people. He would later marry the daughter of an Ifugao village chief.
He pursued postgradute anthropological studies at Harvard and was appointed ethnologist in the Philippine Bureau of Science and part-time head of the Philippine Museum. He became instructor in anthropology at the University of the Philippines in 1914. In 1925, he became the head of the university's department of anthropology and its first professor.
During the Second World War, Beyer was initially allowed to continue his studies but he was later interned along with other Americans in the Philippines.
He received a number of awards for his 60 years of scholarship in the Philippines. In 1965, the University of the Philippine held an H. Otley Beyer Symposium in his honor. The proceedings of the symposium was published two years later.
The National Library of Australia acquired his papers and extensive library in 1972.
Quotes
Archaeological work is like a fascinating mystery story, with the specimens and site data serving as vital clues - and everything is of most importance while both the specimens and your memory of how and where they were found is still quite fresh, and unconfused by later activities elsewhere. -- In a letter to a colleague in March 1955.
Beyer described his work as trying to serve the University [of the Philippines] and to procure and conserve for the People of the Philippines the evidence of their abundant ancient culture. -- In a letter to Carlos P. Romulo, then president of the University of the Philippines.
References
- Gosling, Andrew. An American in Manila: Otley Beyer and his collection at the National Library Of Australia. National Library of Australia News, 7 (10), July 1997, pp 6-8.