ALIENS IN THE TRIBE: Review

• Published in: The New York times 1989
• Main Authors: Norton, Mary Beth, Mary Beth Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University. Her books include "Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800."
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Benedict, Ruth; Caffrey, Margaret M; Fletcher, Alice C; La Flesche, Francis; Mark, Joan; NORTON, MARY BETH
• ISSN: 0362-4331

What made [Alice C. Fletcher] and [Ruth Fulton Benedict] ''strangers'' in their own land? Strikingly, both lost their fathers when they were about 20 months old. [Joan Mark], an associate in the history of anthropology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, who writes about Fletcher, and [Margaret M. Caffrey], a historian at Memphis State University, who writes about Benedict, see these parallel events as critical in their subjects' early development. They led both anthropologists to a sense of disconnectedness from society, and to an enduring attraction to strong male figures. Both Fletcher and Benedict benefited directly and repeatedly from a longstanding professional relationship with an important male patron - for Fletcher, F. W. Putnam, the curator of the Peabody Museum; for Benedict, her teacher and mentor at Columbia University, Franz Boas. Had it not been for Putnam, who validated Fletcher's early work and gave her professional standing through his support and encouragement, Fletcher might well have remained on the periphery of the new and growing field of anthropology. Had it not been for Boas, who badgered Columbia administrators for years before they appointed Benedict to a regular faculty position in 1931, she would probably have been relegated to part-time employment and continual financial and professional uncertainty. Most obviously, both women revealed their estrangement from their culture in their insistence on pursuing professional careers. Even so, Fletcher's and Benedict's lives differed dramatically. Alice Fletcher came of age at a time when American colleges were largely closed to women; she was essentially self-educated and, indeed, to use Ms. Mark's term, ''self-fashioning.'' She had no female role models, no feminist theorists to guide her. Beginning as a women's club lecturer on ''American antiquities,'' she worked as a land allotment agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Then in 1890 a wealthy female admirer, Mary Copley Thaw of Pittsburgh, endowed a fellowship at the Peabody Museum specifically for Fletcher that allowed her to concentrate on ethnographic work among American Indians. One of the first people to do field work in the modern sense of the term, Fletcher was a pioneer, both as a woman seeking a professional career and as an anthropologist seeking to define the field.