However, she faced barriers as a woman scientist in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; in order to compete, she defied societal expectation which pushed some to regard her as stubborn and aggressive.

Her formal education most likely began with governesses from private schools, then transitioned to academies and seminaries for women where the goal was to prepare their students to become wives and mothers.

However, Coxe Evans also studied science, mathematics, history, geography, and other subjects because of the developed curriculum in Philadelphia schools.

She attended Miss Anabel's English, French, and German School, originally located at 1350 Pine Street in Philadelphia.

When she returned to Washington, she continued her studies under her father (a lawyer) and William M. Mew, a chemist at the Army Medical Museum, since most colleges and universities were only open to men.

Evans married James Stevenson on April 18,1872 before he left for an expedition under Ferdinand V. Hayden to conduct geological surveys in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah.

Matilda Stevenson's marriage to James changed her life; he encouraged her to be bold and adventurous, never stopping or stalling her progress as a scientist.

Matilda Stevenson's contributions often focused on women and family life, for which she "quickly developed a reputation as a vigorous and devoted scientist.

One of Stevenson's greatest skills was data collection; she did not rely on a single source, standard practice at the BAE.

[19][20] During these expeditions with her husband, in 1881 Matilda Stevenson met her life long Zuni friend, We'wha, a lhamana.

However, later many other women important to the fields of science joined WASA, including Anita Newcomb McGee and Maria Mitchell.

[13] In 1890 John Wesley Powell hired Stevenson as an assistant ethnologist, the first woman employed by Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, initially to organize his notes and later taking on a bigger role and leading her own research.

Stevenson was invited to join the Anthropological Society of Washington (ASW) in 1891 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1892.

Stevenson served "as one of the judges of awards for the exposition's Department of American Ethnology" and delivered some speeches in the Women's Building.

[39] Between 1897 and 1902, Stevenson suffered bouts of ill health;[40] she sent Powell a letter stating her intention to study various other tribes.

[41][42] Her intentions did not change the fact that she failed to complete the draft of her project The Zuñi Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies (1904).

[35] There are many opinions on the reasoning for Steveson's furlough; some authors believe that Powell wanted to rid the BAE "of staff members slow to publish.

"[46] Just short of her retirement date at age 66, Stevenson died of heart troubles on June 24, 1915, in Maryland, where she'd gone to live with friends.

Her obituary in the Evening Star described her as "Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson, an authority on the Zuni and kindred tribes of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, who was to have retired from her position in the Bureau of Ethnology in the Smithsonian Institution June 30th, after twenty-six years of service."

Although she described herself as "poor as a church mouse," her work was acclaimed and her will lists such enviable possessions "as property in New Mexico and a ranch in Espanola Valley."