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Dr. Frances Leon Quintana Surrounded by loving family and free of illness or pain, noted anthropologist Dr. Frances Leon (Swadesh) Quintana passed away at the age of 91 on January 16, 2009, in an Albuquerque residential facility. She was a pioneer, expanding the frontiers of what was possible for women of her generation, as well as a teacher, and a faithful wife and mother. Born in Irvington-on-Hudson in 1917 to Maurice Leon and his wife, Frances Juliana Webster Goodrich, Dr. Quintana attended the Ecole Internationale de Geneve. She graduated at age 15, and entered Vassar College after a year at art school. While still a student, Dr. Quintana came to New Mexico in 1936 to excavate the ruins at Chaco Canyon. She studied at Yale with linguist Edward Sapir, who described how language shapes our experience of the world. After one year, Dr. Quintana went to Mexico to work among the Tarascan and Otomi peoples with Dr. Morris Swadesh. She transcribed native languages into written form and instructed students into literacy as part of the reforms of the Lazaro Cardenas presidency. For her doctorate at Colorado University, Quintana worked in the Southern Ute area. Her work was published in 2004 as Ordeal of Change: The Southern Utes and their Neighbors. Dr. Quintana served as Curator of Ethnology at the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, producing exhibits and teacher training materials on topics such as The Lands of New Mexico and Toys and Games of New Mexico. At the time, there were no Hispanics or Native Americans among the senior staff of the Museum of New Mexico. Thanks in part to the leadership of Dr. Quintana, this failing was redressed. She gladly took risks to her career to speak truth to the powerful in defense of the powerless. Her professional papers have been made available to the public through the Rocky Mountain Online Archive by the Center of Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico. Following her retirement in 1978, she married Miguel Quintana, with whom she shared 22 joyful years, living in Aztec, NM and vacationing at the seaside in Mexico. She continued to work, reissuing Los Primeros Pobladores (Notre Dame Press), in a reader-friendly edition called Pobladores. Her first passion, however, was her family, for whom she did many kindnesses. Her passing was infinitely gentle, as befits a woman who lived in the true pattern of Christ. She was predeceased by daughter Marta; and is survived by sons Pablo, Vidal, and Joel, and by daughters Victoria Ann, Rosa, Daisy, and Deborah. An announcement on the memorial service, to be held in the spring, will follow.
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