13 The education of a Seton Indian 



It was in 1936 just twenty-one years ago that John Baker laid 

 the groundwork for the field studies that were to supply the basic 

 facts uncovered by our research projects. The most critical species 

 on the list was the ivory-billed woodpecker, of great size and even 

 greater rarity. Though it was thought to be already extinct by the 

 late 1920s, hope for its survival was revived in 1932 when a few 

 birds were discovered in the Singer Tract in Madison Parish, 

 Louisiana. Five years later other ivory-bills were reliably reported 

 in the Stewards' Neck-Wadmacaun section of the Santee River 

 bottoms in Georgetown County, South Carolina. Field work was 

 begun in January, 1937, under an Audubon Research Fellowship 

 that was established at Cornell University my own short-lived 

 Alma Mater with Dr. Arthur A. Allen in charge. James T. Tanner, 

 a graduate student, was selected for the job. 



In 1939 two more projects were launched, one on the California 

 condor and the other on the roseate spoonbill. The condor study 

 was set up at the University of California, again under an Audubon 

 Fellowship, and with Dr. Alden H. Miller and the late Dr. Joseph 

 Grinnell in charge. A graduate student, Carl B. Koford, was se- 

 lected as Fellow. Well along in that same year it was decided to 

 assign the spoonbill study to me. 



In Florida Bay the spoonbills arrive on their nesting grounds in 

 October, and so it was that in that month, in the year 1939, Evelyn 

 and I gave up our house in Amityville, lent piano, refrigerator, and 

 a few other items to friends and, storing the remainder of our few 

 worldy goods, packed our two small children into a shiny new and 

 unpaid-for Ford, and hauling a not-so-new house trailer behind 

 us, set oft in the direction of Florida and a new life. It was also our 

 hope that we might be able to work out a new life for the roseate 

 spoonbill. 



