author
Carrie De Voe
Best known for a single 1904 collection of Native American stories from Kansas, this little-known writer left behind a book that blends regional history, folklore, and personal observation. Her work preserves legends connected with the Kaw and neighboring peoples in a style that is direct and easy to follow.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Carrie De Voe is known for Legends of the Kaw: The Folk-Lore of the Indians of the Kansas River Valley, published in 1904. Reliable sources available online point to this book as her main surviving work, and they consistently identify it as a collection centered on the traditions and stories of the Kaw and other Indigenous peoples connected with the Kansas River valley.
In the book's own prefatory material, De Voe says she had spent part of her life in the American West and had lived for several years in an old mission town. She presents herself not as a formal scholar, but as someone trying to record stories, ceremonies, and local traditions she had encountered or heard retold.
Very little clearly documented biographical information about her seems to be widely available today. Because of that, she is remembered chiefly through this one book, which continues to circulate in digital libraries and audiobook catalogs as an early effort to gather and retell regional folklore from Kansas.