Raymond David Fogelson (August 23, 1933 - January 20, 2020[1]) was an American anthropologist known for his research on American Indians of the southeastern United States, especially the Cherokee. He is considered a founder of the subdiscipline of ethnohistory.
Fogelson was born August 23, 1933, in Red Bank, New Jersey. In 1951 he was admitted to Wesleyan University in the pre-med program, shifting first to psychology and then to anthropology. He received an M.A. in 1958 and a Ph.D. in 1962 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was influenced by two Americanist anthropologists with strong interests in psychology, Anthony F. C. Wallace and A. Irving Hallowell.
He began fieldwork with the eastern Cherokee in 1956 under the direction of the anthropologist John Gulick; fieldwork with the Oklahoma Cherokee was conducted in 1958 and 1960. In 1960-61 Fogelson was a research fellow at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute.
In 1962 he began a teaching position at the University of Washington, during which time he did fieldwork among the Shuswap in British Columbia, though fieldwork with Oklahoma Cherokee and Muskogee (Creek) continued through the 1960s. In 1965 he moved to the University of Chicago, where he continued to teach in the Department of Anthropology until his death.
He also testified extensively before congressional committees on federal recognition of Indian tribes such as the Lumbee.
In 2006 a volume was published in his honor (New Perspectives on Native North America; see sources), consisting of contributions from many of his former students, including Jeffrey D. Anderson, Mary Druke Becker, Margaret Bender, Robert A. Brightman, Thomas Buckley, Raymond A. Bucko, Raymond J. DeMallie, David Dinwoodie, Frederic W. Gleach, Michael E. Harkin, Joseph C. Jastrzembski, Sergei A. Kan, Robert E. Moore, Larry Nesper, Jean O'Brien, Pauline Turner Strong, Greg Urban, and Barrik Van Winkle. The volume also contains articles by Regna Darnell, Jennifer S. H. Brown, and Peter Nabokov.