New York City 2

In his account of the Ross family’s 1938-1939 sojourn in the US Ross’s son Ralph Colin Ross writes that he and his parents left Bremerhaven on October 10, 1938 for a five-day voyage on the ss Europe to New York; Ross’s biographer, on the other hand, writes that they left on October 17.^1-2 A day after their arrival Ralph Colin went on to Chicago to attend school, while Colin Ross and his wife Lisa stayed in New York, at the Biltmore Hotel, from where they traveled within and without the city.

The footage shows people sitting outside—some have no coats on—, on Riverside Drive, suggesting that it was shot between late October and mid-November (rather than in January 1939, when Ross returned to the city for a speaking engagement; his footage of that time shows that it was much colder; see items New York City 5 and New York City 6). Ross stayed in New York until early December 1938. On December 2, 1938, he wrote a letter on his hotel’s stationary (see Permission requested) to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., where he would have an appointment on December 6.