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"Camping With the Sioux: Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham
Fletcher" is now available from the National Anthropological
Archives, Smithsonian Institution. The online edition of Alice
Fletcher's 1881 diary includes a transcript of her ethnographic
field notes, reproductions of her sketches of Native American
life, and photographs of Nebraska and South Dakota from a
variety of Smithsonian collections.
Alice Fletcher (1838-1923) was the first American woman
anthropologist. The online exhibit documents her earliest period
of fieldwork, an eight-week excursion through Omaha, Ponca and
Sioux Indian territory with traveling companions Susette La
Flesche, an Omaha Indian, and Thomas Henry Tibbles, a journalist. The diary provides a rare glimpse of the trials early
ethnographers faced and chronicles Fletcher's burgeoning
understanding of fieldwork methodology. The final diary entries
recount Fletcher's interview with Sitting Bull, who was then
imprisoned at Fort Randall.
Also included in the online edition is a complete bibliography
of works by Alice Fletcher and Francis La Fleshe, her protege and
adopted son, as well as links to Fletcher papers in other
archives.
The online exhibit can be found at:
http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/fletcher/fletcher.htm
Please direct questions to Robert Leopold at address below.
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