Archives West Finding Aid

Alice Cunningham Fletcher was the first anthropologist to work among the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho. She was sent as a Special Agent of the U.S. government to facilitate the allotment of the Nez Perce Reservation in north-central Idaho. Her work with the Nez Perce was between 1889 and 1892. She was a public lecturer in the earl 1880s and began informal studies under Professor Frederic W. Putnam of Harvard University and the Peabody Museum. Fletcher was born 15 March 1838 in Havana, Cuba. She died 6 April 1923. She was the president of the Anthropological Society of Washington in 1903 and in 1905 she became the first female president of the American Folklore Society.