A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians (Women in the West) - Hardcover

Mark, Joan T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803231288 ISBN 13: 9780803231283

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1989

Synopsis

Called "Her Majesty" because of her resemblance to Queen Victoria and known as "the measuring woman" among the Indians whose land allotments she administered, Alice Fletcher (1838–1923) commanded respect from both friend and foe. She was the foremost woman anthropologist in the United States in the nineteenth century and instrumental in the adoption of the policy of severalty that dominated Indian affairs in the 1880s. This is the full and intimate story of a woman who, as she grew in understanding of Indian ways, came to recognize that she was the one who was alien, a stranger in her native land.

Joan Mark recreates the long and active life of Alice Fletcher from diaries, correspondence, and other records, placing her achievements for the first time in a feminist perspective. Sustained by a sense of mission, Alice Fletcher challenged her society's definition of what women could be and do.

About this title

About the Author

Joan Mark, associate in the history of anthropology; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; is the author of Four Anthropologists: An American Science in Its Early Years (1980) and coeditor, with Frederick F. Hoxie, of With the Nez Perces: Alice Fletcher in the Field, 1889–1892, by E. Jane Gay (1981, also a Bison Book).

Reviews

Mark's empathetic biography rescues from obscurity a woman who was a dynamic influence in 19th-century Indian policy and the organization of the infant science of anthropology. Mark reveals the transformation of Fletcher from Victorian socialite concerned about the "women question" into a philanthropic anthropologist dedicated to solution of the "Indian question." At 43 Fletcher virtually invented anthropology as a policy science. The book reveals much about Fletcher's lifelong personal struggle against male-dominated power institutions and her relationship with her companions Jane Gay and Francis LaFlesche--indeed it is as much their biography as hers. Historians--legal, feminist, and anthropological--will find this of interest and value.
- Allen C. Turner, Univ. of Idaho, Moscow
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803231288
• ISBN 13: 9780803231283
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 428