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Please contact the Center of Southwest Studies Archives Manager at archives@fortlewis.edu for more information about reproductions and accessing the collection.

Access Restrictions: There are no access restrictions on the use of this collection. The collection is non-circulating but open to the public for use in the Delaney Southwest Research Library at the Center of Southwest Studies.

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Collection Description

Historical/Biographical Note: Ward Shepard was a soil conservationist and forester who taught briefly at Harvard after graduating from that institution. Soon thereafter he took a job at the Department of the Interior and worked there throughout his career, which included much work with John Collier, who was perhaps ten years his senior. Mr. Shepard’s concern was for the survival of indigenous peoples of the world, and he wrote about that topic, including the work, Food or Famine and an unpublished work about the damaging effects of the belief in Darwinian theories of the survival of the fittest. He lived in the Washington, D.C. area through his adult years, retiring at about age 59 to a 65-acre property in Vienna, Virginia where he built a home using the local timber, where he lived until his death at about age 72. He had three sons, one of whom was the donor’s father. Carol Shepard (the donor) carried her grandfather’s papers around with her since she was in her twenties and began to organize them about a dozen years ago. She writes: “my grandfather, Ward Shepard, worked with John Collier, the first U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in the late 1920's-early 1930's. They were active in the southwest with Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo peoples.  I have much correspondence, writings and photos from that period. John Collier and my grandfather were very close friends. In their retirement in the 1950s they corresponded almost every day. Much of this time Collier was living again in Taos, NM. It was an intensely creative time for both him and my grandfather and they used each other to critique their thoughts and writing. My grandfather seems to have ‘collected’ anything Collier sent to him. One of my favorites is reprints of a series of articles entitled ‘Our Mingling Worlds’ that John Collier wrote in 1959 for a small Taos periodical called El Crepusculo. It describes his whole introduction to and love for the people of the Taos Pueblo.”

Scope & Contents: This collection consists of correspondence between Ward Shepard and John Collier and writings of both men, including a typescript of Collier's long poem, "Selections from the Entry to the Desert" (1956), and the 19-page publication "Our Mingling Worlds," a compendium of newspaper articles published in the historic Taos weekly newspaper El Crepusculo (Taos, N.M.), starting on August 27, 1959 through circa early 1960, describing his experiences living in Taos, N.M. and other philosophical thoughts about Native Americans and other indigenous people, and photoprints (approximately 20 items, including several large photos of Native Americans, one of them including John Collier, standing second from the left, with men who may possibly be Shoshone elders, and numerous small contact prints) by Ward Shepard, circa early 1930s-1959.

Acquisitions Information: This collection is the Center of Southwest Studies' accession 2005:06004, donated by Carol Shepard in June of 2005 by deed of gift.

Processing Information: Carol Shepard arranged and described this collection at the Southwest Studies under the supervision of the archivist in the summer and fall of 2005. This inventory was produced in November of 2005.

Detailed Description of the Collection

Container Description