`

Nebraska Authors

Francis La Flesche

AKA: Frank

Born 1857 Omaha Reservation, NE (USA)

Died 1932

Ethnologist Francis La Flesche was the son of Iron Eye, the last traditionally recognized Chief of the Omaha tribe and half-brother to two accomplished sisters, the physician Suzan La Flesche Picotte and Native American activist Susette La Flesche Tibbles. He worked out of Washington, D.C. for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and later for the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology. He studied both his own Omaha tribe and the Osage. Aside from professional ethnological works and stories, he contributed to an opera, Da-O-Ma, based on his Omaha stories. His early book, The middle five: Indian boys at school, 1900, is an autobiographical account of five Indian boys' experiences at Presbyterian mission school in northeastern Nebraska around the time of the Civil War. As well as being an important anthropological document, the book is recommended for general readers and younger readers.

There is much information about Francis La Flesche in Joan Mark, A Stranger in her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians, 1988. Alice Fletcher, one of 19th century America's most influential anthropologists, was a close friend of the La Flesche family, and she adopted Francis as a son after the death of his mother. Francis lived with her and her partner Jane Gay in Washington DC for many years.

Some other authors who have written about the Omaha tribe: Roger Welsch, David Wishart, Judith Boughter, Michael Tate, George Hyde, Eunice Stabler, Hollis Stabler, Dennis Hastings, Fannie Reed Giffen, Elizabeth Stabler and Mark Awakuni-Swetland.

dsc

Places Lived

Omaha, NE
Walthill, NE
Bancroft, NE
Washington, DC (1857-?)

Author Of

  • Biography
  • Nonfiction

Keywords

Native American Autobiography; Omaha (Tribe); Ethnology; Folklore; Opera; Language; Native Americans--History and Languages

Occupation

Educator
Ethnologist

Places Worked

Bureau of Indian Affairs
Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology

Associations

Son of Joseph La flesche (Iron Eye last Omaha Chief)
Brother of Susette La Flesche Tibbles and Susan La Flesche Picotte

Bibliography

Omaha Tribe. 1905 and 1972.
Middle Five: Indian Boys at School. 1900.
Osage Tribe: Rite of the Chiefs. 1921.
Osage Tribe: Two versions of the Child Naming Rite. 1928.
Dictionary of the Osage Language. 1932.
War Ceremony and Peace Ceremony of the Osage Tribe. 1939.
KE-MA-HA The Omaha Stories of Francis La Flesche. 1995. (ed. by James Parins and Daniel F. Littlefield)

We appreciate corrections and additions to our information about authors, but please read the following guidelines and caveats carefully.

  • The Nebraska Authors database is based on publicly available sources. Unless you are the author contacting us in person, it helps us if you cite the source or sources of your information. We cannot include unsourced information in the database.
  • We may be appreciative of information we choose not to include in the publicly available database.
  • To include an image on an author profile, please send jpg attachment to nebraskaauthors@lincoln.ne.gov. A photo-release agreement is required before the image will be published on this site.
  • Because of the way we are staffed, expect corrections or additions to take time, sometimes up to three months.
  • While we initially included some actual links to external URLs in the database, we will in the future no longer provide functioning links. We will instead record the presence of specific external materials in language that we hope will help intelligent users find it themselves. Web rot, in which actual materials remain online but undergo changes in their URLs, is too demanding in terms of staff time for us to hope to keep external links current.

Please copy, fill out the form below, and email it to heritage@lincoln.ne.gov to suggest a change.

/
Francis La Flesche
francis-la-flesche

Do you have corrections for the above information or other information to add?:

(e.g. Author is buried in Fremont, not in David City / Also wrote for the Daily Nebraskan during her time as a student)