David Crockett Graham Knihy

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David Crockett Graham (1884–1961) was an American Baptist minister who began his missionary work in China in 1911, stationed in Siufu (Xufu), Sichuan Province. There, he engaged with the local Chuan Miao, an ethnic group within the Miao people. After earning a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1927, he conducted an in-depth study of their culture and folklore. Collaborating with Xiong Chaosong 熊朝嵩, he collected and translated 752 songs and stories, primarily after 1932, even as he transitioned to Chengdu, where he became head of the University Museum and a professor at West China Union University. In addition to his pioneering work on the Chuan Miao, Graham was a notable archaeologist and zoological collector, contributing significantly to the Smithsonian Institution's collections. After retiring to Colorado in 1948, he worked on publishing his findings, leading to the release of part of his Songs and Stories of the Chuan Miao by the Smithsonian in 1954. However, due to cost constraints, 276 items were omitted. Hartmut Walravens later discovered this collection at Whitman College, which includes a more comprehensive introduction, legends, mythological tales, religious chants, and folk stories, all annotated by the renowned anthropologist Wolfram Eberhard.

D. C. Graham went to China as a missionary and became curator of the West China Union University Museum in Chengtu after taking his degree in anthropology and religion. He is mainly known among East Asia specialists as an expert on the religion and folklore of the Chuan Miao in Szechuan but he also collected hundreds of thousands of zoological specimens for the US National Museum during his summer vacations. The volume contains, besides a short biography and a listing of his publications, his diaries from these collecting trips; they were not intended for publication but meant as background information for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C. which supported his trips. They give a vivid picture of the travelling and collecting situation in Southern China and the Tibetan borderland.