[1][2] Her mother, the pianist Ethel (Roe) Lindgren, then married the composer Henry Eichheim in 1917.
While still a child, on a trip to see the Great Wall of China, she decided that her interest was in the exploration of the Mongolian region.
[5] In 1927, she travelled to Urga (now Ulaanbaatar) and made later trips to Manchuria and studied nomadic Tungus.
[7] Part of her work on the Evenks was a photograph she captured in 1931 of the disk-shaped device called indaan, which is believed to be a simple model of the world used by reindeer herders.
[8] It also included her account of the Three-River Delta (TRD) Russians, which she said experienced periods of cultural and economic domination in their area of inhabitancy.