Marriottspent the summers of 1935 and 1936 conducting fieldwork among the Modoc Indians in southern Oregon and the Kiowa in southwestern Oklahoma.
Marriott was a field representative with the U.S. Department of Interior Indian Arts and Craft Board from 1938 to 1942.
Two years later, Marriott became artist-in-residence at Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma.
In 1945, she began writing The Ten Grandmothers with her frequent collaborator, archaeologist Carol K. Rachlin, for the University of Oklahoma Press.
Marriott published a biography, Sequoyah: Leader of the Cherokees, in 1956 and Black Stone Knife in 1956.