Nebraska Authors

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.

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Student of and eventual successor to Erwin Barbour as Director of the Nebraska State Museum (Morrill Hall), Schultz joined Morrill Hall staff in 1927, earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska in 1931, and succeeded Erwin Barbour as Director of the State Museum in 1941, the same year Schultz received his doctoral degree from the University.

For over five seasons of exploring and collecting, beginning in 1929, Schultz was to lead the famed South Party expedition, which enriched the collections of Morrill Hall and transformed the study of vertebrate paleontology and early man in North America. The South Party eventually also included the young Loren Eiseley and T. Mylan Stout. In 1973, some forty years later, Eiseley dedicated a book of poetry "to the bone hunters of the old South Party... 1931-1933.. and to C. Bertrand Schultz." The digs also cemented the partnership between Schultz and Mylan Stout, who would be life-long scientific collaborators.

Schultz (always working together with his wife, paleontologist Marian Schultz), Erwin Barbour, and T. Mylan Stout are among the most distinguished of American vertebrate paleontologists, founders of modern American vertebrate paleontology.

Schultz published hundreds of scientific articles with his wife and research partner. They studied in over 60 countries. Schultz represented the University for over 35 years in a cooperative paleontologic and geologic research project with the Frick Laboratory of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. During his tenure as the Director of Morrill Hall, Schultz enhanced the fossil collections, saw the opening of the Ralph Mueller planetarium and numerous exhibits at the museum. Schultz helped found and lead the Nebraska Academy of Science.

The Lincoln City Libraries Heritage Room of Nebraska Authors Archive includes the Loren Eiseley--C. Bertrand Schultz correspondence, 1934-1978 in the Nebraska Academy of Sciences Eiseley Donation.

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After beginning her career as a newspaper reporter in Denver and Chicago, Francis Maule became an influential copywriter and editor of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in New York.

Her father was John Penrose Maule, prosecuting attorney of Fillmore County, Nebraska. When Frances was around eight years old, the Family came to Lincoln, where Mr. Maule successively became city attorney and judge. Francis was familiar with Chancellor Canfield and Lt. John Pershing while attending the University. After settling in New York City Francis wrote the scripts for the vocational guidance programs of Columbia's School of Air (15 minute dramatic sketches on radio), and lectured on vocational problems before schools, colleges, women's clubs and organizations. She edited the National American Woman Suffrage Association's so-called Blue Book, also known as The Woman Suffrage Yearbook (eg., 1917). She is credited as script writer and for playing herself in the 1912 film short "Votes for Women." Francis worked as a copy writer for the J. Walter Thompson company, an iconic advertising agency, from 1920 to 1929. In 1929-1930 she worked as a script writer for the Judson Radio Program, a precursor of CBS.

She and her husband joined the Helicon Home Colony, an experimental utopian community founded by writer Upton Sinclair, in 1907 and lived there for four months until a fire destroyed the Colony and all their possessions.

Francis was long separated from her husband, Swedish-American literary critic, Edwin Bjorkman (1866-1951). Edwin Bjorkman was director of the North Carolina Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, and his papers are at the University of North Carolina. Francis was married to him from 1906 through about 1920, and some of her letters are found in his papers. Digitized versions of those letters are available from the U-NC archives.

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