Dividing the Reservation: Alice C. Fletcher's Nez Perce Allotment Diaries and Letters, 1889-1892

Alice Cunningham Fletcher was both formidable and remarkable. A pioneering ethnologist, she was the first woman to hold an endowed chair at Harvard's Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology-at a time the institution did not admit female students. She helped conceptualize the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 and became one of the first women to serve as a federal Indian agent. A commanding presence, she spent four summers on the Nez Perce reservation. Charged with assigning nearly 757,000 acres, Fletcher supervised the resurvey of reservation boundaries and adjudicated title disputes. She also had to preserve land for transportation routes and restrain white's settlers claiming prime properties. She sought to "give the best lands to the best Indians," but she was challenged by Idaho's terrain, complex Nez Perce ancestries, and her own misperceptions about Native life. She wrote daily-letters, reports, articles, diaries, and more. The collections reproduced here illuminates her relationships with key participants. It also offers insight into how federal policy was applied, resisted, and amended, as well as her internal conflicts over dividing the reservation.