Sister Marie Inez Hilger was born in Roscoe, Minnesota, October 16, 1891. According to her obituary from the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University, Sister Inez was the second oldest child of at least eight siblings: six sisters and two brothers born to Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Hilger. The Hilgers were the first settlers in Roscoe in 1889 after emigrating from Germany. Sister Inez entered Saint Benedict's convent at the age of 17 in 1908 and pronounced her perpetual vows five years later in 1914. She taught for 25 years in elementary, secondary and college levels prior to starting a new career as an anthropologist. When Saint Benedict and Saint John's school planned to expand into a college, Sister Inez decided to pursue higher education. Hilger received her Bachelor's of Arts from the University of Minnesota in American history and American literature. In 1925, she received her Master's of Arts in sociology and social works from the Catholic University of America. She also later received her Ph.D. from Catholic University in 1936. She is notably the first woman to have matriculated with full privileges at Catholic University while enrolled for her Master's. She received her doctorate in her major fields of sociology, anthropology and psychology. After receiving her education, she embarked on a new career in research focused on the lives of children among several Native American groups of North America and Latin America, and among the Ainu people in Japan. While at Catholic University, Margaret Mead, a famous cultural anthropologist and close friend of Sister Inez, sparked an interest in fieldwork in Sister Inez. Her fieldwork began with comprehensive studies of 12 American Indian tribes starting with the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota. Next she worked with the Arapaho before she traveled in 1946 to Chile to study the Araucanian Indians. One of her final assignments in fieldwork was in Japan. In 1955, she became a research associate of the Bureau of American Ethnology. At the age of 74 in 1965, the National Geographic Society asked Sister Inez to study the Ainu people of Hokkaido while in Japan. She also carried out miscellaneous ethnological studies among severl Plains, southwestern and Latin American tribes in her late career. Among them was a collection of "grandmother stories" she collected from the Blackfeet. Sister Inez received eight grants for research, authored 8 books and over 70 essays and articles during the course of her life. Three of her eight books were published by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., as part of its research series in ethnology. Hilger died in St. Joseph, Minnesota, May 18, 1977. Sister Inez's papers are at the National Anthropological Archives.
