La Flesche, Francis, 1857-1932

Francis La Flesche (Omaha, 1857–1932); worked with the Smithsonian Institution; specialized in Omaha and Osage cultures; working 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 Osage 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; son of Omaha chief Joseph LaFlesche (also known as Iron Eye) and his second wife Ta-in-ne (Omaha); earned undergraduate and master's degrees at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC; in 1891 Fletcher had informally adopted the 34-year-old La Flesche.

Francis La Flesche (1857– 1932); born on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska; attended the Presbyterian Mission School on the Omaha Reservation from 1865 until 1869; in the late 1870s he acted as interpreter and informant for ethnologist James Owen Dorsey; he also interpreted for Alice C. Fletcher, who studied the Omaha tribe and with whom he collaborated to collect Omaha and Sioux artifacts for Harvard’s Peabody Museum; he was an ethnologist for the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1910 until his retirement in 1929; in 1911 he joined the Society of American Indians and published The Omaha Tribe, which he co- wrote with Fletcher; La Flesche also studied the Osages, and published some of his findings in The Osage Tribe in the Annual Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology between 1922 and 1930; he published The Middle Five, an autobiographical account of his experiences at the Presbyterian Mission School in 1900, as well as essays and short stories in boarding school newspapers.

Chronology of the Life of Francis La Flesche
1857 December 25
Born on Omaha Reservation near Macy, Nebraska
1879
Lecture tour, Ponca chief Standing Bear
1881
Interpreter, Senate Committee on Indian Affairs
1881-1910
Clerk, Bureau of Indian Affairs
1891
Informally adopted as Fletcher's son
1892
LL.B., National University Law School
1893
LL.M., National University Law School
1900
Published The Middle Five: Indian Boys at School
1906-1908
Marriage to Rosa Bourassa
1910-1929
Ethnologist, Bureau of American Ethnology
1911
Published The Omaha Tribe with Alice Fletcher
1921
Published The Osage Tribe, Part One
1922
Member, National Academy of Sciences
1922-1923
President, Anthropological Society of Washington
1925
Published The Osage Tribe, Part Two
1926
Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Nebraska
1928
Published The Osage Tribe, Part Three
1932
Published Dictionary of the Osage Language
1932 September 5
Died in Thurston County, Nebraska
1939
Posthumous publication of War Ceremony and Peace Ceremony of the Osage Indians