[4][3] Early in his childhood, his father José Dolores moved the family to what was then called the Papago Reservation near Tucson, Arizona, so that he could be sent to a government school.
[2] Kroeber spent close to a month documenting the language himself until he started to become busy with work and suggested to Dolores that he be taught to write O'odham himself.
After being taught, he went on to write various studies into the O'odham language, alongside acting as a guard in the Museum of Anthropology in the University of California, Berkeley.
[4] During most of 1937, he spent time back in Arizona with his family and other O'odham before returning permanently to Berkeley as Preparator to the Museum of Anthropology later that year.
Years prior to his death, he had sustained "...physical shocks-- a bad fall from a scaffold, a ruptured appendix, a second concussion from a robbery hold-up and beating.
Aside from these, he also transcribed several oral stories directly, those being variations of the Creation myth, a variety of traditional songs, speeches, and autobiographies, including his own.