Alice Cunningham Fletcher (March 15, 1838 in
Havana – April 6, 1923 in
Washington, D.C.) was an American
ethnologist,
anthropologist, and
social scientist who studied and documented
American Indian culture. Partner Emma Jane Gay
Queer Places:
214 First St SE, Washington, DC 20003
New Mexico Musuem of Art, 107 W Palace Ave, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Alice Cunningham Fletcher (March 15, 1838 in
Havana – April 6, 1923 in
Washington, D.C.) was an American
ethnologist,
anthropologist, and
social scientist who studied and documented
American Indian culture.
Not much is known about Fletcher's parents; her father was a New York lawyer and her mother was from a prominent Boston family. Her parents moved to Havana, Cuba in vain hopes of easing her father's illness with a better climate. Fletcher was born there in 1838.[1] After her father died in 1839, the family moved to Brooklyn Heights, Fletcher was enrolled in the Brooklyn Female Academy, an exclusive school for the elite,[2] where she first befriended Emma Jane Gay.[3]:114 Fletcher taught school and later became a public lecturer to support herself, arguing that anthropologists and archaeologists were best at uncovering ancient history of humans. She also advocated for the education of Native Americans "so that they could gain accoutrements of civilization."[3]
Fletcher credited Frederic Ward Putnam for stimulating her interest in American Indian culture and began working with him at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.[4] She studied the remnants of the Indian civilization in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and became a member of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879.[5]
From 1881, Fletcher was involved with the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, where native children learned English, arithmetic, and skills designed to allow them to be integrated American citizens.[6]
In 1881, Fletcher made an unprecedented trip to live with and study the Sioux on their reservation as a representative of the Peabody Museum.[7] She was accompanied by Susette "Bright Eyes" La Flesche, an Omaha spokeswoman who had served as interpreter for Standing Bear in 1879 in his landmark civil rights trial.[7] Also with them was Thomas Tibbles, a journalist who had helped publicize Standing Bear's cause and arranged a several-month lecture tour in the United States.[7]
These times also marked the beginning of Fletcher's 40-year association with Francis La Flesche, Susette's half brother. They collaborated professionally and had an informal mother-son relationship. They shared a house in Washington, D.C., beginning in 1890.[8]
In addition to her research and writing, Fletcher worked in several special appointed positions during the late nineteenth century. In 1883 she was appointed special agent by the US to allot lands to the Miwok tribes, in 1884 she prepared and sent to the World Cotton Centennial an exhibit showing the progress of civilization among the Indians of North America in the quarter-century previous, and in 1886 visited the natives of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands on a mission from the commissioner of education. In 1887 she was appointed United States special agent in the allotment of lands among the Winnebago and the Nez Perce under the Dawes Act.[5]
She was made assistant in ethnology at the Peabody Museum in 1882, and in 1891 received the Thaw fellowship, which was created for her.[4] Active in professional societies, she was elected president of the Anthropological Society of Washington and in 1905 as the first woman president of the American Folklore Society. She also served as vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,[5] and was a longtime member of the Literary Society of Washington.
Working through the Women's National Indian Association, Fletcher introduced a system of making small loans to Indians, wherewith they might buy land and houses.[5] She also helped secure a loan for Susan LaFlesche to enable her studies at medical school. Graduating at the top of her class, LaFlesche became the first Native American woman doctor in the United States.
Later Fletcher helped write, lobbied for and helped administer the Dawes Act of 1887, which broke up reservations and distributed communal land in allotments for individual household ownership of land parcels.[8]
In 1888 Fletcher published Indian Education and Civilization, a special report of the Bureau of Education. She was a pioneer in the study of American Indian music, a field of research inaugurated by a paper she gave in 1893 before the Chicago Anthropological Conference.[4] In 1898 at the Congress of Musicians held in Omaha during the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, she read several essays upon the songs of the North American Indians. A number of Omaha Indians sang their native melodies. Out of this grew her Indian Story and Song from North America (1900), exploring a stage of development antecedent to that in which culture music appeared.[5]
In 1888, Fletcher also reconnected with Emma Jane Gay, and they renewed their friendship. Gay taught herself photography during this time.[1] Gay accompanied Fletcher in Nebraska and Idaho as a cook, maid, and secretary.[3]:111-150 Gay had failed to earn a permit from the federal government to serve as the "official" expedition photographer, but during the expedition she took over 400 photographs of the Nez Perce.[5][6]
Gay neither married nor had children. After the Western expedition she had embarked upon with Fletcher, Gay returned to Washington, D.C., where she and Alice Fletcher shared a house until Gay and her niece Emma traveled to England for an extended stay. In multiple texts Gay is referred to as Fletcher's "companion", living in "domestic partnership" or "Boston Marriage" with her.[6][3]:111-150 [5] The roles that Gay played during the expedition—as well as the fact that she never married a man and had intimate relationships with other women over the course of her lifetime—have led scholars to believe that she was a lesbian.[3]:111-150 [4] Due to this fact, art historians identify Gay as the first American lesbian photographer.[8][10]
Fletcher worked with Frederic Ward Putnam in his research on Serpents Mound in Ohio and assisted in the efforts to raise funds to purchase the site in 1886. The site was donated to the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society in 1900 and is a National Historic Landmark.[9]
IIn 1930, Margaret Mead started work with the Omaha, and decided to concentrate on the modern aspects of the tribe, because of the extensive work already done by Alice Fletcher.[9]
OOver her lifetime Alice Fletcher worked with and for the Omaha, Pawnee, Sioux, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Oto, Nez Percé, Ponca and Winnebago tribes.[10]
Fletcher wrote about the experiences of her 1881 field trip in two journals. These journals included drawings of the plains, reservations, and many of her different campsites throughout eastern Nebraska and South Dakota. Even though many of her writings regarding the Sioux would seem rather insensible by contemporary anthropological standards, "Her writings reflect the attitudes regarding the movement of history and social evolution prevalent in her day".[14]
In 1911, with Francis La Flesche, she published The Omaha Tribe. It is still considered to be the definitive work on the subject. Altogether she wrote 46 monographs on ethnology.[4] In 1908 she led in founding the School of American Archaeology in Santa Fe, New Mexico.[15] From 1899 until 1916 Fletcher was on the editorial board of the American Anthropologist, and she also made major contributions to many issues.[16] Fletcher was a pioneer in the study of Native American music. She became fascinated by their music and dancing so she transcribed hundreds of their songs. In 1898 she presented several essays on the subject of Native American songs at the Congress of Musicians in Omaha. From these essays eventually came her books "Indian Story and Song from North America" and "The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony".[11]
Her ashes are interned in the patio wall of the New Mexico Museum of Art behind a bronze plaque with a quote from her.[18]
My published books:
