Mabel Powers

Born Ella Mabel Powers in Hamburg, New York, in 1872, she studied in western New York and taught in Rochester before building a career as a writer and public speaker. As a teenager she was already publishing articles about Native American life, and she later became known around Chautauqua and beyond for lectures on Indigenous history, women's issues, and peace.

A turning point came in 1910, when she was formally adopted by the Snipe Clan of the Tonawanda Seneca and given a name often translated as "she who carries and tells the stories." That experience shaped much of her later work. She devoted herself to collecting and retelling Iroquois stories, especially for children, in books including Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children.

Her public life reached beyond writing. Sources describe her as an advocate for Native American communities, a feminist, and a pacifist, and note that Jane Addams appointed her in 1924 to represent Indigenous peoples at a world peace gathering. Today, she is remembered both for preserving traditional stories for new generations and for the energy she brought to causes she believed in.