Francis La Flesche (1857 - 1932)

Born 25 Dec 1857 in Cuming County, Nebraska

Died 5 Sep 1932 at age 74 in Thurston County, Nebraska

Biography

Francis La Flesche is Notable.

Francis La Flesche (Omaha, 1857–1932) was the first professional Native American ethnologist; he worked with the Smithsonian Institution. He specialized in Omaha and Osage cultures. Working closely as a translator and researcher with the anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher, La Flesche wrote several articles and a book on the Omaha, plus more numerous works on the Osage. He made valuable original recordings of their traditional songs and chants. Beginning in 1908, he collaborated with American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman to develop an opera, Da O Ma (1912), based on his stories of Omaha life, but it was never produced. A collection of La Flesche's stories was published posthumously in 1998.

Of Omaha, Ponca, and French descent, La Flesche was the son of Omaha chief Joseph LaFlesche (also known as Iron Eye) and his second wife Ta-in-ne (Omaha). He grew up on the Omaha Reservation at a time of major transition for the tribe. Before the establishment of anthropology programs, La Flesche earned undergraduate and master's degrees at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. He made his professional life among European Americans.

Occupation: anthropologist, ethnologist, musicologist

Known for: First Native American anthropologist, known for his studies of Native American Omaha and Osage culture and music. Worked at Smithsonian Institution.

Francis La Flesche was born in 1857 on the Omaha Reservation, the first child of his father Joseph LaFlesche's 2nd wife Ta-in-ne, an Omaha woman. He was a half-brother to his father's first five children. Their mother was Mary Gale, mixed-race daughter of an American surgeon and his Iowa wife. After Mary's death, the widower Joseph (also known as Iron Eye) had remarried. Francis attended the Presbyterian Mission School at Bellevue, Nebraska. Later he attended college and law school in Washington, D. C.

Francis La Flesche married Alice Mitchell in June 1877, she died the next year. In 1879 he married Rosa Bourassa, a young Omaha woman, about the time of his tour in 1879-1880 with his sister and Standing Bear. They separated shortly before he began working in Washington, D.C., in 1881 and divorced in 1884.

For most of his years in Washington D. C., Francis La Flesche shared a house on Capitol Hill with Alice Fletcher, with whom he worked closely, and Jane Gay. Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche kept the nature of their relationship private. She willed money to him at her death

Francis La Flesche died on 5 September 1932 in Thurston County, Nebraska. He was buried in Bancroft Cemetery, Bancroft, Nebraska, near the graves of his father and his half-sisters Susette and Rosalie La Flesche.

Legacy and Honors: 1922, Francis La Flesche was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences

1922-1923, Elected as President of the Anthropological Society of Washington

1926, Awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Nebraska. Because of the close working relationship between Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, the Smithsonian Institution has collected their papers in a joint archive

Sources

Find A Grave: Memorial #54048717 Francis La Flesche

"LaFlesche Family" Biographical Note, Archives, Nebraska State Historical Society

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_La_Flesche