Alice Fletcher - the first American female surveyor
Surveying is one of the few professions where practitioners truly leave their mark, both physically, with survey markers, as well as in recorded history. Sometimes this work is truly monumental, as is the case with Alice Cunningham Fletcher.
Fletcher was born into wealth – her father was a prominent New York attorney, and her mother came from a wealthy Bostonian family. Unfortunately, her father’s health was poor and the family moved to Havana, Cuba shortly before Fletcher was born in the hopes the climate there would improve his health. However, the climate change didn’t work, and her father passed away in 1839 when Fletcher was only a year old.
Little is known of her early life, except that the family relocated to Brooklyn Heights, New York City, after her father’s death. Later, Fletcher was enrolled in the Brooklyn Female Academy. The goal of the school was to provide a good education for girls – an opportunity only available to the privileged.
Ahead of her time
Alice Cunningham Fletcher at her writing desk
Alice had an inquisitive and incisive mind and a prodigious appetite for learning. After graduating, she taught school and later became a public lecturer to support herself. By the 1870s, she was a prominent member of several upper-class feminist and suffrage groups in New York City. At the time, women did not have the power to make contracts, own property or vote, and these groups wanted to ensure that women had a voice in their own lives and destinies. It was a long struggle -- it wasn’t until 1920 that the 19th Amendment was passed that gave women the right to vote.
Women’s rights were not Alice’s only interest. During this same period, she became interested in archaeology and also read extensively about characteristics of different people and how they related to each other. Her interest was encouraged by Frederic Ward Putnam, director of Harvard’s Peabody Museum. By 1878, she was doing archeological fieldwork with American Indian remains in Florida and Massachusetts. In 1881 she went to Nebraska to study native culture and began living among the Omaha. This experience spurred her commitment to improve the lot of Native Americans.
Drafting the law and surveying the land
Remarkably, this commitment ultimately led to her foray into surveying. Fletcher saw that the Omaha would likely lose their land as so many previous tribes had lost theirs. To prevent that, she went to Washington in 1882 and drafted a bill to divide Omaha tribal lands into individual Indian holdings, or allotments, and successfully lobbied for the bill’s passage in Congress. President Arthur then appointed her to supervise the apportioning of the lands. With the help of a young clerk in the Indian Bureau, Francis La Flesche, 75,931 acres in 54 allotments to 1,194 Omaha people were allotted by 1884. This project established Fletcher as the first American female surveyor.
In 1886, Fletcher went to the Aleutian Islands to study indigenous educational needs. Her tireless campaigning for the improvement of Native American welfare was instrumental in the passage of the Dawes General Allotment Act (1887). This act further apportioned remaining tribal lands and provided for eventual citizenship for Native Americans. Today, surveyors who become Certified Federal Surveyors continue this work.
Francis LaFlesche, undated photo.
Fletcher continued championing the cause of Native Americans – even informally adopting Francis La Flesche as her son and encouraging his education. He eventually became an anthropologist, graduating from National University Law School and eventually earned a Master’s degree in ethnology from that same institution.
In 1887, Fletcher conducted land apportionment among the Winnebago and Nez Percé Indians. Fletcher was also a pioneer in the study of Native American music. She became fascinated by their music and dancing so she transcribed hundreds of their songs. In 1898 she presented several essays on the subject at the Congress of Musicians in Omaha. She developed these essays into books, authoring Indian Story and Song from North America (1900) and The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony (1904; reissued 1996).
Authorship
Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Chief Joseph at the Nez Percé Lapwai Reservation in Idaho, where Fletcher arrived in 1889 to implement the Dawes Act. The man on one knee is James Stuart, Alice Fletcher's interpreter. According to Jane Gay in "With the Nez Perces" (University of Nebraska Press, 1981), Stuart customarily kneeled in this way when he felt anxious.
Her major work is The Omaha Tribe (1911), an exhaustive study written with Francis La Flesche. From 1899 to 1916 she was on the editorial board of the American Anthropologist, to which she was also a frequent contributor, and in 1908 she led in founding the School of American Archaeology (later the School of American Research) in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Fletcher became President of the Anthropological Society of Washington in 1903 and the first woman President of the American Folklore Society in 1905. One of her colleagues, Walter Hough, remembered Fletcher as one who, "Mildly, peaceably, yet with great fortitude...did what she could to advance the cause of science".
Fortunately, she lived long enough to see the passage of the 19th Amendment, finally giving women the right to vote. By the time of her death in 1923 at the age of 85, Alice Fletcher was a living legend in anthropology, active to the end in promoting scholarly enterprises and good works.
It’s important to remember those who have made our way of life possible, and Alice Fletcher certainly made her mark by good works and by opening the field of surveying to women in the United States.
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