Fletcher, Alice Cunningham (1838–1923)

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Fletcher, Alice Cunningham (1838–1923)

American anthropologist who did some of the first ethnographic field work among Native Americans, primarily the Omaha, and acted as government agent on the Indian allotment program. Born Alice Cunningham Fletcher on March 15, 1838, in Havana, Cuba; died on April 6, 1923, at her home in Washington, D.C.; daughter of Thomas Fletcher (a lawyer) and Lucia Adeline (Jenks) Fletcher; attended the Brooklyn Female Academy (later the Packer Collegiate Institute); never married; no children.

Raised in Brooklyn; at age 18, moved to New Jersey as a governess to the Claudius B. Conant family (1856); returned to New York City; joined the Sorosis Club; helped found the Association for the Advancement of Women (1870); began educating herself and lecturing in anthropology (1878); began ethnographic field work among the Omahas (1881); joined the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian (1883); began work for U.S. government on allotting land on the Omaha, Winnebago, and Nez Perce Reservation (1884); carried on survey for the Senate report on Indian Education and Civilization issued 1888; received the Thaw fellowship in anthropology at Harvard University and began to devote full time to the science (1890); elected to first term as president of the Woman's Anthropological Society (1890); informally adopted Francis La Flesche (1891); worked on the World's Columbian Exposition (1893); was founding member of American Anthropological Association (1902); served as president of the Anthropological Society of Washington (1903); served as president of American Folklore Society (1905) and also presiding officer of the anthropology section of the American Academy of Science; served as chair of American Committee of Archaeological Institute of America (1907); elected vice-president of American Anthropological Association (1908); continued active association with Archaeological Institute of America until 1912.

Publications:

extensive, many in the Peabody Museum publications, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Anthropologist, and the Bureau of American Ethnology publications; several have been reprinted, including Indian Song and Story (Peabody Museum, 1893), The Hako (BAE, 1904), Handbook of North American Indians (BAE, 1907, 1910).

In 1907, Alice Cunningham Fletcher was 69 years old when she systematically destroyed all material relating to her private life, choosing, as she said, to "avoid gossip," and expressing her desire to be remembered as an anthropologist and scientist. There is not much information, therefore, about her early years, although the public part, once she began to support herself, is well documented, as is the final phase, in which she became widely recognized as an anthropologist. To cover the early years, therefore, her biographer Joan Mark , author of A Stranger in her Native Land, has resorted to Gertrude Stein 's notion of "repeatings" to assist in identifying the character of Fletcher and understanding her life. Mark's work suggest that two major themes reappear through Fletcher's writings: the concepts of "struggle" and "alone in the world." The struggle is either against male power and authority wrongfully used or against the Victorian gender constructs that limited what Fletcher could do. In Mark's view, Fletcher's gender was the "single most significant factor in explaining the course of her career." The second of the "repeatings," Fletcher's sense of being alone in the world, reflected her alienation from her family and the feeling she had that, unlike indigenous Americans, Euro-American immigrants had not yet, as Mark puts it, "developed a sense of the sacred geography of America, of nature and their place in it."

Alice Cunningham Fletcher was born in Havana, Cuba, where her parents, who belonged to a prominent New England family, were residing because of her father's health. The family returned to New York, and her father died before she was two years old. Raised in Brooklyn, she attended the Brooklyn Female Academy, where she was called "little Alice" by classmates, including E. Jane Gay , with whom she formed an association 40 years later. Fletcher said of these years only that she attended "the best schools." Following her mother's remarriage, Alice was apparently unhappy at home and may have suffered unwanted sexual overtures from her stepfather. At 18, she took a job as a governess for several years, residing at the home of Claudius B. Conant and traveling extensively in Europe with his family while apparently having no contact with her own. She later taught literature and history at private schools in New York.

Around 1870, Fletcher returned to New York City "to sample the cultural life" and to teach literature and history in private schools, although she still received support from Conant. In her association with a number of women's clubs, she worked on issues such as temperance, anti-tobacco, and the "woman problem." She became a member of the Sorosis Club, which was primarily a social club, although many of its members—including such prominent figures as Julia Ward Howe , Mary Livermore , and Maria Mitchell —were later involved in forming the Association for the Advancement of Women. The women organized study committees, sponsored Congresses of Women in different cities, and generally worked for women's rights, and Fletcher's name appears often in connection with the association and its annual meetings, as well as other congresses held at the time for discussion and the presentation of papers. The association had six committees (science, statistics, industrial training, reform, art, and education). Members were to gather facts about women, their education and training; encourage women and assist them in preparing for work; and create women's jobs in business and industry. Fletcher was chair for several of the congresses up to 1882, when her involvement in anthropology curtailed her participation.

Conant continued to provide Fletcher with financial support until his death in 1877, apparently paying her well. He also provided investments for her future, but the financial depression of the mid-1870s in the United States limited her financial resources. At age 40, she was partly in pursuit of financial security when she began to make a serious effort at establishing herself in a profession. By 1878, her name had begun to appear on the lecture circuit, first in New York City, then elsewhere. Gradually, her selection of topics settled on prehistoric America and the emerging field of anthropology, until she had developed a series of 11 lectures on ancient America, which included specimens, maps and watercolor illustrations. In preparing for these presentations, Fletcher established contacts that included Frederic W. Putnam, director of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who invited her to study at the museum and offered to assist in her anthropological education. Her initial work at the Peabody appears to have centered on archaeological work related to shell middens and included raising money for research and the protection of key sites such as the Serpent Mound in Ohio. Putnam assisted Fletcher in joining the American Institute of Archaeology when it was founded in 1879, encouraged her to present papers before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and remained a strong supporter of her until the end of her life. In their extensive correspondence, Fletcher initially tended to seek his guidance and approval, but their later relationship was characterized by collegiality and mutual respect.

Sometime in early 1880, Fletcher met the young Omaha Indians Francis and Susette La Flesche , and Thomas Henry Tibbles (whom Susette eventually married), who were touring the East to protest the removal of Native Americans from Dakota reservations to Indian Territory. When Fletcher made plans for a field study of Native American women to add to what she called the "historical solution of the woman question," as well as to gather scientific facts on contemporary Native Americans, she asked Susette to assist her in traveling to Nebraska to live on the reservation. Over the next several years, she produced extensive writings that suggest she was heavily influenced by the work of anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, author of Ancient Society (1877), and by visits with the La Flesche family and other Native Americans, including the Sioux chief Sitting Bull.

In 1881, Fletcher made an autumn camping trip to Nebraska that turned out to be the first important step in what would become a distinguished career in anthropology. While there, she told a group from the Omaha tribe: "I came to learn, if you will let me, some things about your tribal organization, social customs, tribal rites, traditions and songs. Also to see if I can help you in any way," anticipating her work both as a field ethnographer and as an agent of the U.S. government directly involved with Native American issues.

Fletcher arrived in Nebraska at a critical time in Indian and government relations. The federal government was in the process of shifting its philosophy toward the country's Native Americans from one of "armed conflict with aliens" with stated aims of "clearing Indians from the land" and "separating Indians from the whites" to one that proposed the assimilation of Native Americans into the surrounding society through such policies as offering them the right to vote, attend public schools, and own their own plots of land. There was, of course, a government incentive for this policy: by allocating each Native American a parcel of land for "farming," called allotments, the "surplus" reservation land could then be opened to settlement by whites.

The Omahas encountered by Fletcher were mostly educated people, associated with Christian missions, who were working to get Congress to agree to allotments as a means of protection against their removal from the reservations. Her views on public policy were further shaped by association with the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indians, a Quaker-based group that included influential individuals then lobbying for Indian citizenship, assimilation, and the proposed Dawes Act (General Allotment Act). Fletcher planned to follow the tradition of Morgan, James Owen Dorsey, Frank Hamilton Cushing, and Matilda Stevenson , who were just beginning to pioneer scientific field work in this area. There were many others on the reservations, however, who were deeply opposed to allotment, but the government quickly saw allotment as a solution to several problems and passed the Omaha Severalty Act in 1882. In 1883, because of her lobbying efforts with the Lake Mohonk group, Fletcher was appointed special agent to carry out the allotment of Omaha land.

Although Fletcher had been able to obtain some funds from private sources, the job had become the only means available to continue her ethnographic work and limited the time she was able to devote to her field studies. With Francis La Flesche as her interpreter, Fletcher worked hard to assure that the Omahas were given the best land on their reservation and that individuals received their allotments before any land was sold. While the government work was under way, she suffered for months with inflammatory rheumatism, and when La Flesche had some of his people visit her and sing ritual healing songs, she used the opportunity to begin collecting material on ceremonial activities. Her efforts to collect the songs of the Omaha also led to her being credited with initiating ethnomusicology studies for Native Americans; she also recognized La Flesche as a valuable resource for her ethnographic work.

I learned to hear the echoes of a time when every living thing even the sky had a voice. The voice devoutly heard by the ancient people of America I desired to make audible to others.
—Alice Cunningham Fletcher

Fletcher continued to work with groups like those at Lake Mohonk that assisted young Indians in building homes when they completed their education. She also lobbied for the Dawes Act, and its final form reflected many of her beliefs. She has often been criticized for what are now seen as patriarchal views that Native Americans were like children and needed "assistance" to "grow up" to civilization, and many have since seen allotment as responsible for the loss of Indian lands and the destruction of many tribes. At the time, however, Fletcher and others truly concerned about the welfare and physical survival of Native Americans believed that allotment was the only way to secure them some land. She went on to negotiate the allotment for both the Winnebagos (1887–89) and the Nez Perce (1890–93), working in each case to get the best land terms for Native Americans despite tremendous pressure from many sides. Her allotment work is documented by E. Jane Gay, who accompanied Fletcher as photographer and "tent" keeper during her work among the Nez Perce. Gay's letters refer to Fletcher as "Her Majesty," a nickname apparently applied because she so resembled Queen Victoria .

During those years of documenting Omaha culture, when the tribe was suffering from the breakdown of its traditional tribal system, Fletcher and La Flesche arranged for the removal of many tribal artifacts for safe-keeping with the Peabody Museum. Fletcher's government work was also extended to include a firsthand survey of all Native American Reservations, including those in Alaska, and an account of the history, current situation and educational facilities for a report on Education and Civilization to the U.S. Senate. This 700-page summary established Fletcher as the period's foremost authority on Native Americans and led almost single-handedly to huge increases in the budget for Native American education.

In 1886, Fletcher was named to an unsalaried position as an assistant at the Peabody. In 1888, she was back lobbying Congress, with Matilda Stevenson, for laws guaranteeing the preservation of archaeological monuments. She wrote popular accounts of her work for Century Magazine and other publications, measured Native Americans for physical studies being done by anthropologists including Franz Boas, and worked on museum exhibits as she "made herself into an anthropologist."

In 1890, Fletcher's hard work began to pay off in recognition both in the United States and abroad. That year Mary Copley Thaw donated money for a fellowship to the Peabody Museum at Harvard, in honor of her late husband William Thaw, to support Fletcher's "scientific and philanthropic researches." The Thaws had backed some of Fletcher's prior research and philanthropic activities through the Peabody Museum, but the fellowship became the first ever given to a woman at Harvard. The fact that Putnam chose to earmark the fellowship for the study of "anthropology" rather than archaeology or ethnology was also an important milestone in the emergence of such studies as a science. The new scientific stature acknowledged by the fellowship also enhanced the position of its first recipient in scientific, philanthropic, and social circles. Over 800 attended the reception in Washington to mark its bestowal, which established Fletcher as the most preeminent woman scientist in the country.

In 1897, however, when Fletcher revisited the Omaha reservation after an absence of seven years, her feelings about the government's work are believed to have undergone a change. Although she never publicly addressed the issue, there is evidence that she recognized that the allotment policy had been a mistake, and Fletcher's biographer suggests that this recognition is accompanied by a withdrawal from philanthropic activities in favor of concentration on her scientific work. In 1905, she wrote in a letter:

The revelation of the Indian's thought, of his ancient attempts to express ideals of life and of duty are not only helpful to an understanding of his conditions today but they are also encouraging to those who are trying to assist him to cross over into our community. There is much in his past that should be conserved.… It is just here that the Ethnologi cal student can become a practical helper to the philanthropist.

For the last 23 years of her life, Fletcher devoted herself to science and an active social life. Although she was never wealthy, she was financially secure and able to establish a home. In 1892, with the assistance of Mary Thaw, she purchased a house in Washington, where she resided with her unofficially adopted son, Francis La Flesche, and various female companions (first E. Jane Gay and later Emily Cushing, the widow of anthropologist Frank Cushing). The house became an important place for anthropologists and Native Americans, and Fletcher's "at homes" were famous for attracting visiting scientists, artists, congressional representatives, and many members of Washington society.

Fletcher's papers written during this period reflect a move from reporting and observations to a new maturity and depth reflected in serious theoretical analysis. In 1890, for example, she presented an insightful paper to the American Folklore Society which treated the "Ghost Dance" phenomenon as a result of the cultural crisis on American Indian Reservations. Despite Boas' description of the ceremony as a "nervous reaction," Fletcher's analysis was later verified by studies identifying the Ghost Dance as part of "revivalistic or cargo cult" movements among societies under the pressures of assimilation. In 1895, her paper on "totemism," a belief that ancestral spirits are connected with animals, challenged the interpretation accepted among European armchair anthropologists that Native Americans actually believed they were descended from the animals. Fletcher's paper, along with a similar one by Boas, led to the establishment of the "American theory" on totemism. Her indepth analysis of Omaha Indian music established her as a leading ethnomusicologist.

Although her trips to the field became less frequent, Fletcher continued to work with informants who came to Washington, and she and La Flesche completed their Omaha ethnography in 1911. By this time the field of anthropology was coming under the control of a new generation of academics, and the younger generation, often trained by Franz Boas, established the tradition of ignoring earlier works on Native Americans such as Fletcher's, while crediting Boas with bringing anthropology to America in the 1890s. Although the 1911 Omaha study was controversial, criticized by American reviewers but often praised by major Europeans in the field such as Hadden, Durkheim, and Mauss, it remained a very popular report.

From 1903 to 1905, Fletcher had worked extensively on articles for the Handbook of North American Indians; it is a sign of her influence that she was asked to contribute 35 entries to this major publication. In 1904, she published, along with two Pawnee men, J. Murie and Tahirussawich, a major monograph on Pawnee ceremonial, The Hako. During this period, she also occupied major leadership roles in several professional associations. Probably her most prestigious position was that of vice-president and presiding officer of the anthropology section of the American Association of the Advancement of Science. Following her address at one of its meetings, she attended a meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Women in Canada with her lifelong compatriots, Howe and Livermore, and was greeted there as a heroine. She was president of the Women's Anthropology Society in Washington for several years, and, after it merged with its male counterpart, she served as president in 1903. In 1902, she was a charter member, and the only woman, of the new American Anthropology Association and served on its council. She was also president of the American Folklore Society in 1905.

By 1900, anthropology was at a critical turning point. The early death of one of the leaders in the field, Frank Cushing, stunned the scientific community, and especially Fletcher, who noted that the two had shared field methods which included "unconscious sympathy" with Native Americans. Recognizing her own limitations due to age, gender, and lack of a Ph.D., she also saw a vacuum developing in the leadership of American anthropology. A few years earlier, she had written to Putnam at the Peabody: "I am sometimes tempted when I think of the Museum and of what I could possibly do there, to wish what I never did wish, to be a man! I am aware that being a woman I am debarred from helping you as I otherwise could—but the bar is a fact."

Nevertheless, through her association with several wealthy female patrons, especially Sara Yorke Stevenson , Phoebe A. Hearst , and Mary Thaw, she began to enhance the future of the science from "behind the scenes." Through Hearst, Fletcher played a major role in the establishment of the important Department of Anthropology at Berkeley by Alfred Kroeber. She traveled in the United States, Mexico, and Europe on scientific business, and in 1910 she addressed the British Association for the Advancement of Science, where she was elected vice-president for the anthropology section.

Some of her most important activities were associated with the Archeological Institute of America (AIA), when she lobbied for the Lacey Bill in 1904 to protect American antiquities and the bill creating Mesa Verde park and when she became chair of the AIA's committee on American archaeology in 1906, establishing a strong association with the archaeologist Edgar Hewett. Fletcher led the forces for the AIA to create an American School for archaeology in the United States as they had in Greece and Italy, seeing this as an opportunity to develop a new force in American archaeology. Although her work in this field eventually led to alienation from her old friend Putnam, her foresight in recognizing the important role the southwest would play in future anthropological studies in the United States proved correct. The School of American Archaeology established in 1907 at the Old Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Hewett as its head, eventually lived up to Fletcher's vision and became a major center for study of anthropology and American Indian art by the mid-20th century. Fletcher served on the board of regents for the school until 1912 and spent several summers in Santa Fe. This work led her to choose the school's original location as the site for her ashes.

Stevenson, Sara Yorke (1847–1921)

American archaeologist. Born Sara Yorke in Paris, France, in 1847; died in 1921; granted Sc. D., University of Pennsylvania; married Cornelius Stevenson, 1870.

Sara Yorke came to America from Paris in 1862 and, in 1870, married Cornelius Stevenson. She was later awarded the degree of Sc. D. by the University of Pennsylvania, the first ever conferred on a woman by that institution. In 1898, she was sent to Egypt for the American Exploration Society to investigate archaeological work in the Nile Valley. Her books include Maximilian in Mexico and The Book of the Dead.

In the last 12 years of her life, Fletcher served mostly in the role of a research associate to Francis La Flesche as his own career as an ethnographer matured. She worked on Osage songs for his study. La Flesche escorted her to Santa Fe and the Omaha reservation for the last time in the summer of 1922, and she fell ill the following February. Alice Cunningham Fletcher died on April 6, 1923.

sources:

Mark, Joan. A Stranger in Her Native Land. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

——. Four Anthropologists. NY: Science History Publications, 1980.

Mark, Joan T., and Frederick Hoxie, eds. With the Nez Perce: Alice Fletcher in the Field, 1889–92 by E. Jane Gay. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.