Washington Matthews (June 17, 1843 – March 2, 1905) was a surgeon in the United States Army, ethnographer, and linguist known for his studies of Native American peoples, especially the Navajo.

He grew up in Wisconsin and Iowa, and his father, a medical doctor, began training his son in medicine.

[3] The American Civil War was raging at the time, and Matthews immediately volunteered for the Union Army upon graduating.

In ensuing months he serviced soldiers and local civilians; he vaccinated hundreds of Native Americans of the Owens Valley against smallpox.

While serving at a prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, Matthews made a study of the Modoc language.

During this time he conducted research and wrote several papers on physical anthropology, specifically craniometry and anthropometry.

[10] John Wesley Powell of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology suggested that Matthews be assigned to Fort Wingate, near what is now Gallup, New Mexico.

In an account of Matthews's Presidential Address to the American Folklore Society in 1895 ("which was titled "The Poetry and Music of the Navahoes"), The Critic magazine wrote: Matthews has been credited for treating "Navajo medicine men as colleagues" and seeing his informants as individuals rather than "just sources of data".

[18] However, his research has been credited with creating through "careful and thorough fieldwork ... a monumental bequest for future generations of the Navajo people and scholars".