Maud Van Cortlandt Oakes (1903–1990) was an ethnologist, artist and writer who published her research into the cultures of indigenous tribes in the Americas, including the Navajo of the American Southwest and the Mam of Guatemala.
She developed an interest in the culture of Native Americans while visiting Washington State and vacationing on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound.
[6][7] On a similar trip, from late 1945 to early 1947, Oakes lived for 17 months in the village of Todos Santos in a remote part of the highlands of Guatemala as the only outsider.
One of her resulting books, The two crosses of Todos Santos, Oakes described a religious ritual that had survived from Mayan times.
[4] Oakes became a student of Carl Jung and made his psychology the subject of her final book, The Stone Speaks, which reflected her personal meditations on a large carved stone located in the garden of Bollingen Tower, the name given to Jung's home on Lake Zürich in Switzerland.