Francis La Flesche

Francis La Flesche (* 1857, † 1932) was an American anthropologist and Omaha.

La Flesche was the adopted son of anthropologist Alice Fletcher, with whom he worked on the recording and preservation of old Omaha culture.

His father was the Omaha chief Iron Eye, his sisters Susette " Bright Eyes " La Flesche Tibbles and La Flesche Picotte Dr. Susan.

Francis La Flesche accompanied Bright Eyes and the Ponca chief Standing Bear spoke on her lecture tour on the east coast of the United States and Europe, which followed a landmark ruling, the U.S. District Court Judge Elmer Dundy in the process of Standing Bear in 1879. It ruled that an Indian under the law, a person with all the rights is just as any other citizen.

La Flesche examined in a significant oral history and ethnology rescue the music and rituals of the Osage, close relatives of Omaha. This work he undertook as an employee of the Bureau of American Ethnology and the Smithsonian Institution 1910 until 1929. He documented text and music of the rituals in writing and with original recordings.

Osages have compared the significance of this evidence with that of the Dead Sea Scrolls.