Virginia Dox (October 31, 1851 – February 14, 1941) was a 19th-century American missionary, educator, and explorer in the Intermountain West, and later a noted public speaker and fundraiser for educational institutions including Whitman College and Berea College. Under the auspices of the New West Education Commission, she founded schools in Idaho and New Mexico. She was the first white woman to explore the Grand Canyon, and also the first white woman to visit the Havasupai. Her vivid depictions of Western life earned her the nickname of "the female Bret Harte".[1]
In the course of her travels, Dox lived among 23 Native American tribes.[2] She was an adopted member of nine tribes: the Old Town Penobscot, Delaware, and Osage, and the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora.[3] She became a faculty member of Whitman College, in recognition of her fundraising work, but was prevented from taking the position by a sudden decline in health.[3][4]
- ^ "Female Bret Harte: Experience of Miss Virginia Dox in the Far West". Jackson Citizen Patriot. 1896-01-28. p. 6.
- ^ Isabel Foster (1928-08-19). "A Little Schoolmarm of the Old West". Hartford Courant. p. E3. Archived from the original on June 19, 2013.
- ^ a b "Miss Dox Who Long Taught Indians Dies". Hartford Courant. 1941-02-15. p. 4. Archived from the original on June 19, 2013.
- ^ Penrose 1935, p. 150.