Francis LaFlesche

Francis La Flesche
Francis La Flesche
Born	(1857-12-25)December 25, 1857 Omaha Reservation
Died	September 5, 1932(1932-09-05) (aged 74) Thurston County, Nebraska
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 (1857–1932) was the first professional Native American ethnologist; he worked with the Smithsonian Institution, specializing first in his own Omaha culture, followed by that of the Osage. 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 the composer Charles Wakefield Cadman to develop an opera, Da O Ma (1912), based on his stories of Omaha life. A collection of his stories was published in 1998.

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

Francis La Flesche was born in 1857 on the Omaha Reservation, the first child of his father Joseph LaFlesche's second wife Ta-in-ne, an Omaha woman. He was 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 married Ta-in-ne, an Omaha woman. Francis attended the Presbyterian Mission School at Bellevue, Nebraska. Later he attended college and law school in Washington, DC.