Carobeth Laird

Carobeth Laird (née Tucker; formerly Harrington; July 20, 1895 – August 5, 1983) was an American ethnographer and linguist, known for her memoirs and ethnographic studies of the Chemehuevi people in southeastern California and western Arizona. Her book, The Chemehuevis, was characterized by ethnographer Lowell John Bean as "one of the finest, most detailed ethnographies ever written." Her memoirs, Encounter with an Angry God and Limbo, chronicled her first marriage to linguistic anthropologist John P. Harrington and her time in a nursing home, respectively.

Early life and education Carobeth Tucker was born in Coleman, Texas. She discovered her facility for languages during a trip to Mexico during the summer of 1909. After giving birth to her first daughter, Elisabeth, at age seventeen, in 1915, she enrolled in the San Diego Normal School, where she took a course in linguistics that was taught by John P. Harrington, an extremely productive and eccentric linguist and ethnographer. Harrington was impressed by Tucker's facility with languages, and they were married in the following year. They had one daughter, Awona.