Erminnie A. Smith

Erminnie Adelle Smith (; April 26, 1836– June 9, 1886) was a linguist, ethnologist, anthropologist and geologist who worked at the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology. She has been called the "first woman field ethnographer" and was the first female member elected to the New York Academy of Sciences on November 5, 1877.

Erminnie Smith published multiple works on the language and culture of the Iroquois people. She was active in cataloging their legends and employed John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt to assist in this work. Her work on the Iroquois, along with that of Alice Fletcher on the Omaha and other tribes, and Matilda Coxe Stevenson on the Zuni people, challenged views of women's position in both indigenous North American and Victorian societies. Smith's accounts showed that Iroquois women held rights to property and other social freedoms that American and European women lacked, and that they were honored and respected for their involvement and contributions to culture, economics and ritual practice. (sometimes given as 1839), She graduated in 1853 from the Troy Female Seminary (later known as the Emma Willard School) in Troy, New York. She married Simeon H. Smith of Chicago in 1855.

Smith spent four years in Germany while her sons attended school. During that time, she completed a degree in geology at the School of Mines, Freiburg, Saxony. Smith accumulated a private collection of geological specimens, one of the largest for its time in the United States. After her death this collection was inherited by her sons. and later at the Lafayette Reformed Church of Jersey City. Smith served as president of the women's club from 1879 to 1886, and often lectured at their monthly receptions. Following her death, the society established an award in her honor and published a small souvenir collection with some of her poems and essays as well as memorial tributes, In Memoriam Mrs. Erminnie A. Smith. In addition to the Aesthetic Society of Jersey City, Smith was a member of the women's club Sorosis. As part of her work for the Smithsonian, she published reports on Iroquois language and customs including Myths of the Iroquois (1883). Smith transcribed and classified over 15,000 words in Iroquois dialects. She was adopted into the Tuscarora tribe in Canada and named Ka-tei-tei-sta-kwast (beautiful flower). The Iroquois-English dictionary she prepared was published following her death.

Smith was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Historical Society of New York.

Selected works Myths of the Iroquois, 1883.