Francis La Flesche (ca. 1857-1932) was one of the first Native Americans to have a career as a research scholar.

Francis La Flesche was one of the first Native Americans to have a noteworthy career as a research scholar and writer of scholarly books. This achievement was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that he had only a few years of primary and secondary education at an Indian mission school, followed many years later by academic training in law while working as a clerk for the federal government in Washington, D.C. With the aid of his extraordinary family and a devoted friend, he remade himself into a widely respected ethnologist.

He was born on the Omaha Indian Reservation, some 70 miles north of the present city of Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Joseph La Flesche (Estamahza or "Iron Eye") and Elizabeth Esau (Ta-in-ne). La Flesche's...