Life Among the Indians: First Fieldwork Among the Sioux and Omahas (Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians) - Hardcover

Alice C. Fletcher (1838&;1923), one of the few women who became anthropologists in the United States during the nineteenth century, was a pioneer in the practice of participant-observation ethnography. She focused her studies over many years among the Native tribes in Nebraska and South Dakota.

Life among the Indians, Fletcher&;s popularized autobiographical memoir written in 1886&;87 about her first fieldwork among the Sioux and the Omahas during 1881&;82, remained unpublished in Fletcher&;s archives at the Smithsonian Institution for more than one hundred years. In it Fletcher depicts the humor and hardships of her field experiences as a middle-aged woman undertaking anthropological fieldwork alone, while showing genuine respect and compassion for Native ways and beliefs that was far ahead of her time. What emerges is a complex and fascinating picture of a woman questioning the cultural and gender expectations of nineteenth-century America while insightfully portraying rapidly changing reservation life.

Fletcher&;s account of her early fieldwork is available here for the first time, accompanied by an essay by the editors that sheds light on Fletcher&;s place in the development of anthropology and the role of women in the discipline.