[1][2][3] She has been called the "first woman field ethnographer"[4] and was the first female member elected to the New York Academy of Sciences on November 5, 1877.

[6] Her work on the Iroquois, along with that of Alice Fletcher on the Omaha and other tribes, and Matilda Coxe Stevenson on the Zuni people, challenged views of women's position in both indigenous North American and Victorian societies.

They met to discuss topics in science, literature and art,[12] first at her home at 203 Pacific Avenue[13] and later at the Lafayette Reformed Church of Jersey City.

[14] Following her death, the society established an award in her honor and published a small souvenir collection with some of her poems and essays as well as memorial tributes, In Memoriam Mrs. Erminnie A.

[11] By 1880, when she was recruited by the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Smith was an expert on the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy in the United States and Canada,[12] which included the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora people.

[11] Smith was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science[12] and served as secretary of its geology and geography section in 1885.