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

Mark, Joan T.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803281560 ISBN 13: 9780803281561

Publisher: Bison Books, 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

Written from a feminist viewpoint, this intriguing, scholarly biography recounts the life of Alice Fletcher, a 19th century anthropologist who championed the rights of American Indians. In 1881 at age 43, Fletcher gave up her career as a public lecturer and traveled west to the Dakota Territory where she observed the Sioux. From there she went to Nebraska to live with the Omaha, and then on to Idaho where she camped with the Nez Perce. Among the remarkable woman's political accomplishments was a congressional bill providing for individual land allotments to reservation Indians. Using Fletcher's personal journals and letters, Mark ( Four Anthropologists ) draws intelligent conclusions about Fletcher's character: her need for a family, a home and a cause, all of which she discovered among the Indians. "Living with my Indian friends I found I was a stranger in my native land," Fletcher wrote. "I learned to hear the echoes of a time when every living thing even the sky had a voice. That voice devoutly heard by the ancient people of America I desired to make audible to others." Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803281560
• ISBN 13: 9780803281561
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 452