author
Alice C. (Alice Cunningham) Fletcher
1838–1923
A pioneering ethnologist and anthropologist, she devoted much of her career to studying Native American life, music, and ceremony. Her work left an important record of Omaha and other Indigenous traditions, even as her role in U.S. Indian policy remains controversial.
2 Audiobooks
Indian Story and Song, from North America
by Alice C. (Alice Cunningham) Fletcher
Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs
by Alice C. (Alice Cunningham) Fletcher
About the author
Born in 1838, Alice Cunningham Fletcher became one of the best-known American ethnologists of her era. She studied and documented Native American cultures at a time when few women were recognized in the field, and she became especially known for her work on Native American music and ceremony.
Fletcher carried out important fieldwork among the Omaha and worked closely with Francis La Flesche, whose collaboration helped shape some of her most significant research. Together and separately, they produced studies that preserved songs, traditions, and social practices that might otherwise have been lost from the written record.
Her legacy is complicated. Alongside her scholarly work, Fletcher was involved in federal Indian allotment policy, which was promoted at the time as reform but is now widely seen as damaging to Native communities. That mix of careful cultural documentation and deeply contested policy work makes her a notable and debated figure in the history of anthropology.