Marah Ellis Ryan

Marah Ellis Ryan (c. 1866–1934) was born in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and began writing under the pen name Ellis Martin before marrying actor Samuel Erwin Ryan in 1883 and spending five years on the stage. She then turned to fiction, publishing some twenty novels between 1889 and 1925, among them Told in the Hills (1891), That Girl Montana (1901) and Indian Love Letters (1907). Around 1909 she went to live among the Hopi in Arizona, where she was reportedly the only white woman admitted to their secret religious rites, and became a recognized authority on Native American tribal life. She died in Los Angeles in 1934, at sixty-eight.