Ruth Murray Underhill (1883-1984) was an American anthropologist who wrote numerous books on Native Americans. Relatively late in life she came to Columbia University where she studied with with Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, earning a PhD in anthropology in 1937. She worked in the Federal government--at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and later the Bureau of Indian Affairs--until 1949 when she became a professor of anthropology at the University of Denver.