After David French took a teaching post at his former undergraduate institution, Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, in 1947, the couple began a decades-long involvement with the Warm Springs community. While her husband's research focused on ethnobotany and language, hers focused on naming practices and ceremonialism, in a community composed of Sahaptins, Paiutes, and—the Frenches' specialization -- Wasco Chinookans. French received her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1955. Her dissertation, though unpublished, is considered an important contribution to the study of ceremonialism in the region and an innovative study in the semiotic analysis of ritual.