Francis La Flesche

Francis La Flesche was the first professional Native American ethnologist he worked with the Smithsonian Institution, specializing first in his own Omaha culture, followed by that of the Osage. Working closely as a translator and researcher with the anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher, La Flesche wrote several articles and a book on the Omaha, plus more numerous works on the Osage. He made valuable original recordings of their traditional songs and chants. Beginning in 1908 he collaborated with the composer Charles Wakefield Cadman to develop an opera, Da O Ma , based on his stories of Omaha life. A collection of his stories was published in 1998.

Francis La Flesche was born in 1857 on the Omaha Reservation, the first child of his father Joseph LaFlesches second wife Tainne, and halfbrother to his fathers first five children. Their mother was Mary Gale, daughter of an American surgeon and his Iowa wife. After Marys death, the widower Joseph married Tainne, an Omaha woman. Francis attended the Presbyterian Mission School at Bellevue, Nebraska. Later he attended college and law school in Washington, DC.

Source: Wikipedia