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Floyd Schultz collection

 Collection
Call Number: RH MS 446

Overview

Floyd Schultz (1881-1951) was an amateur archaeologist who lived in Junction City, Geary County, and Clay Center, Clay County, Kansas. His interest in Native American history and culture extended to both participating in archaeological digs and documenting the lives of living Native Americans in various counties throughout Kansas. This collection includes Schultz's correspondence with firms to acquire artifacts and photographs for his collections, as well as a handwritten list of his photograph collection. The collection also includes photographic prints and a handful of flexible negatives from Schultz's photograph collection of Native American peoples, some of which were acquired from the collection of Albert B. Reagan.

Dates

  • Creation: 1870s-1949

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

No access restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Spencer Library staff may determine use restrictions dependent on the physical condition of manuscript materials.

Biography of Floyd Schultz (1881-1951)

Floyd Schultz was born in November 1881 at Fort McKavitt, Texas, spending much of his youth at Fort Riley, Kansas due to his father's Army career. Schultz had an early career as a mechanic with the Union Pacific and Omaha & Grand Island Railroads. Retiring in 1911 to Clay Center, Kansas with his wife Adah Jane (Broceus) Schultz, he entered into a business partnership operating a theater. This business grew, and Schultz became a local civic and social leader.

In addition to business interests, Schultz throughout his life had a personal interest in collecting Native American artifacts and photographs and conducting archaeology and ethnography. Schultz conducted amateur archaeological investigations particularly in Clay, Geary, and Riley Counties, Kansas. He also visited the Potawatomi Prairie Band reservation in northeastern Kansas throughout the late 1920s to early 1940s, taking both notes and film footage/photographic stills of life on the reservation.

Floyd Schultz died in April 1951.

Biography of Albert B. Reagan (1871-1936)

Albert B. Reagan was born near Maxwell, Iowa in January 1871, the son of William Simpson and Annie Emily Regan. As a teenager, his family moved near Fredonia, Kansas; Reagan returned to Iowa a few years later to teach.

Reagan graduated from Central Teachers' College in Oklahoma in 1898 and joined the U.S. Indian Service, first working at Fort Apache, New Mexico. He continued his studies while working with the Service, completing a bachelors of science degree from Valparaiso University of Indiana in 1902 and a bachelor of arts from the University of Indiana in 1903, as well as a masters in 1904. Eventually he received his doctorate from Stanford University in 1925.

Reagan married Otilla Adelaide Reese in 1903, and they moved to Nett Lake, Minnesota and then Arizona, where Reagan served as principal of first the March Pass Indian School and then the Cornfields Indian School. Reagan spent over 30 years with the Indian Service, he and his wife also living in Colorado, South Dakota, Washington, and Utah. He was apparently fluent in Apache and may have learned other Native American languages, and he wrote several papers and monographs on Native American ethnography and archeology, as well as other topics. He held academic and museum appointments in anthropology with the Victoria Memorial Museum in Canada, Laboratory for Anthropological Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He also donated Native American artifacts to several museums, including the Museum of Natural History at the University of Kansas.

Dr. Reagan died in May 1936. Floyd Schultz made contact with his widow Otilla in 1942, at which time he acquired prints of several of Reagan's photographs.

Extent

2 Linear Feet (5 document cases)

Language of Materials

English

Scope and Contents

Photographs in this collection are based on Schultz's listing (avaialble at RH MS 446). Spencer Research Library does not appear to have received Schultz's entire photographic collection, so there are gaps in the numbering sequence. Some 45 photographs in the collection are specifically from Dr. Reagan's collection and time spent at Fort Apache, New Mexico at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.

Many photographs are identified, some from left to right with a., b., c., etc. identification for individuals within groups. Terms and language used on the images themselves and elsewhere in the collection is representative of when the materials were created and collected and has not been replicated in this finding aid whenever possible. Many images are of Pottawatomi Prairie Band and Apache tribe members; though images of individuals from other tribes are also present in the collection, including Cheyenne, Chipewa, Comanche, Dakota, Iowa, Kechie, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Miami, Navaho, Osage and Southern Osage, Pawnee, Piegan, Quapaw, Quilante, Sac and Face, Shawnee, Sioux, Ute, Waco, and Wichita.

Physical Location

RH MS 446

Physical Location

RH PH 6

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchase, George V. Allen, 1972.

Title
Guide to the Floyd Schultz Collection
Subtitle
Floyd Schultz collection
Author
Finding aid prepared by mab, 2007. Finding aid encoded by mab, 2007. Finding aid revised by mwh, 2020.
Date
2007
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
Finding aid written in English.
Finding aid permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/10407/0750853254
Preferred citation
Floyd Schultz collection, Kansas Collection, RH MS 446, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas

Repository Details

Part of the University of Kansas. Kenneth Spencer Research Library Repository

Contact:
1450 Poplar Lane
Lawrence KS 66045-7616 United States
785-864-4334