Alice C. Fletcher

Alice Cunningham Fletcher (March 15, 1838 – April 6, 1923) was an American ethnologist, anthropologist, and social scientist who studied and documented Native American culture. Fletcher was a proponent of Native American cultural assimilation, the Indian boarding school system, and private landownership among indigenous peoples.

Early life and education

Not much is known about Fletcher's parents; her father was a New York lawyer and her mother was from a prominent Boston family. Her parents moved to Havana, Cuba in vain hopes of easing her father's illness with a better climate. Fletcher was born there in 1838. After her father died in 1839, the family moved to Brooklyn Heights, New York City. Fletcher was enrolled in the Brooklyn Female Academy, an exclusive school for the elite.

Career

Fletcher taught school and later became a public lecturer to support herself, arguing that anthropologists and archaeologists were best at uncovering ancient history of humans. She also advocated for the education of Native Americans "so that they could gain accoutrements of civilization."

Fletcher credited Frederic Ward Putnam for stimulating her interest in American Indian culture and began working with him at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. She studied the remnants of the Indian civilization in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and became a member of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879.

From 1881, Fletcher was involved with the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, where native children learned English, arithmetic, and skills designed to allow them to be integrated American citizens.