William Henderson Kelly ( (1902-November-23) (1980-February-09)November 23, 1902 – February 9, 1980) was an American professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.
He mainly worked with the Cocopah Tribe located in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico in the 1940s and learned about their language, ceremonies, and traditional knowledge related to plant use.
In 1930, he sold the Epitaph and began working for his father as advertising manager of the Arizona Daily Star.
[3] He left the publishing business in 1934 to pursue the study of anthropology, with a specialty in the American Southwest,[1] first earning a bachelor's degree at the University of Arizona in 1936 under the mentorship of Byron Cummings, and then continuing for his doctorate at Harvard University, where he worked with Clyde Kluckhohn and Leslie Spier.
Kelly continued his work with the Cocopah tribe and joined a number of international and national organizations, mainly the Inter-American Indian Institute (IAII) and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) of which he was an active member.