Alice C. Fletcher

Alice C. Fletcher (1838–1923), one of the few women who became anthropologists in the United States during the nineteenth century, was a pioneer in the practice of participant-observation ethnography. She focused her studies over many years among the Native tribes in Nebraska and South Dakota.Life among the Indians, Fletcher’s popularized autobiographical memoir written in 1886–87 about her first fieldwork among the Sioux and the Omahas during 1881–82, remained unpublished in Fletcher’s archives at the Smithsonian Institution for more than one hundred years. In it Fletcher depicts the humor and hardships of her field experiences as a middle-aged woman undertaking anthropological fieldwork alone, while showing genuine respect and compassion for Native ways and beliefs that was far ahead of her time. What emerges is a complex and fascinating picture of a woman questioning the cultural and gender expectations of nineteenth-century America while insightfully portraying rapidly changing reservation life. Fletcher’s account of her early fieldwork is available here for the first time, accompanied by an essay by the editors that sheds light on Fletcher’s place in the development of anthropology and the role of women in the discipline.

Alice Cunningham Fletcher (March 15, 1838 in Havana - April 6, 1923 in Washington, DC.) was an American ethnologist, anthropologist, and social scientist who studied and documented American Indian culture. 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. 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. 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.

Reproduction of the original: Indian Stories and Song From North America by Alice C. Fletcher

Reproduction of the original: Indian Stories and Song From North America by Alice C. Fletcher

Indian Story and Song is a classic Native American culture/history text by Alice C. Fletcher. This unique presentation not only demonstrated the scientific value of these aboriginal songs in the study of the development of music, but suggested their availability as themes, novel and characteristic, for the American composer. It was felt that this availability would be greater if the story, or the ceremony which gave rise to the song, could be known, so that, in developing the theme, all the movements might be consonant with the circumstances that had inspired the motive.