author
Alice C. (Alice Cunningham) Fletcher
1838–1923
A pioneering ethnologist and social scientist, she devoted much of her career to studying Native American communities and recording their music, stories, and daily life. Her work helped shape early American anthropology, even as some of her role in federal Indian policy remains debated today.
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 Havana on March 15, 1838, and later active in the United States, Alice Cunningham Fletcher became one of the early women to build a national reputation in anthropology and ethnology. She studied at Harvard's Peabody Museum and went on to do fieldwork with Native American communities, especially the Omaha, whose lifeways, traditions, and music she carefully documented.
Fletcher is especially remembered for her research on Native American music and for her long collaboration with Francis La Flesche, an Omaha scholar and ethnologist. Together they produced important studies, including work on the Omaha people, and her wider career connected scholarship, museum work, and public advocacy.
Her legacy is complex. Alongside her groundbreaking field research, she also influenced federal Indian allotment policy, which was later widely criticized for its harmful effects on Native communities. She died in Washington, D.C., on April 6, 1923, leaving behind a body of work that is still discussed for both its pioneering scholarship and its contradictions.