Jessie Donaldson Schultz

Jessica Louise Donaldson Schultz Graham (1887–1976) was an English professor at Montana State College and social worker on Native reservations in Montana and Wyoming.

Early life and education Jessie "Jessie" Louise Donaldson was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Paul, Minnesota to a wealthy family. She grew up in Minneapolis and McGregor, Iowa. Jessie earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Minnesota in 1913 and moved to Gallatin, Montana to become a rural schoolteacher. The play was successful in Bozeman, and she attempted to stage it in Yellowstone National Park as well. She was banned from doing so by English department head Professor William Brewer, who termed the production "an Indian camp." From the beginning of her employment in 1934, Jessie assisted in improving marketing and production for the fledgling crafts business on the reservation and provided employment opportunities for Blackfeet women through the Civil Works Organization. Jessie also assisted in establishing the Plains Indian Museum, and a craft store for Blackfeet artists in St. Mary, Montana. Following Schultz's death in 1947 and her own retirement in 1953, Jessie moved to St. Helena, California to write, although she frequently visited Montana. Jessie's published works “appeared in Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion, Popular Mechanics, Montana the Magazine of Western History, and various educational journals”.

Publications Schultz, James Willard, and Jessie Louise Donaldson. The Sun God's Children. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1930. Donaldson, Jessie Louise. 1931. A stylistic study of variants of the mentor-grandmother myth. Jessie Donaldson Schultz. "Adventuresome, Amazing Apikuni: Reflections on the Life and Work of James Willard Schultz as Seen by His Widow." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 10, no. 4 (1960): 2–18. Accessed June 3, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/4516432.