Jones attended two of the more than 400 American Indian boarding schools that were dedicated to removing indigenous cultural heritage.
[7] In the summer of 1900, Jones went to study the Sac and Fox of the upper Mississippi, under the direction of his Columbia mentor Frank Boaz, who said to benefactors “the work must be pushed more energetically on account of the rapid disappearance of the material.”[3] Once Jones received his PHD from Columbia in 1904, he commenced investigations along the northern Algonquian tribes.
[7] He was killed on March 29, 1909, at Dumobato on the east side of Luzon in an altercation with some of the Ilongot among whom he was engaged in fieldwork.
[7] It is debatable as to whether or not his death was actually a murder, as his diary entries and correspondences in the last months of his life revealed feelings of peace and belonging with the Ilongot people.
Within a few weeks following the event of his death, the United States burned twenty Ilongot villages in retaliation.