Choice Review

Alice Fletcher is a legend in Americanist anthropology, one of the first women to break into professional status of the late-19th through early-20th century. An innovator in terms of participant observation ethnography, linguistic and folklore studies, and policy applications, she was the first scholar to truly collaborate and publish with a Native American scholar (Francis La Flesche) as an equal. She studiously worked to understand indigenous worldviews and eliminate racist stereotypes. Life among the Indians is Fletcher's 1881-82 fieldwork journal and autobiographical memoir, in which she dispassionately discusses changing reservation life as well as what it was like for a woman who refused to remain hidden or contained by gender expectations to conduct ethnographic fieldwork. The illuminating discussion of eminent scholars Scherer and DeMallie, who spent 40 years compiling and interpreting supplementary materials of this journey, contextualizes the memoir. This book is as rich as Bronislaw Malinowski's or Frank Hamilton Cushing's fieldwork memoirs, and much more sophisticated than either of those works. With this delightful and penetrating journey into transcultural relations and how foundational anthropologists portrayed Indians, Scherer and DeMallie have enriched the understanding of the complexities of 19th-century American anthropology. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. N. J. Parezo University of Arizona