Rosalie La Flesche Farley

Rosalie La Flesche Farley (born Rosalie La Flesche February 9, 1861 Omaha Reservation - May 9, 1900) was the second daughter of Chief Omaha, Joseph LaFlesche. She had an important position among the Omaha tribe as a businesswoman managing the money and land transactions of her people during the transition phase towards living on an reservation.

Life

Rosalie La Flesche was born in the Omaha reservation. She was the second daughter of one of the tribal chiefs, Joseph LaFlesche, named Iron Eye, and his first wife, Marie Hinnuagsnun Gale.[1][2]

She was part of the last Omaha generation to have a traditional  childhood . Their father advocated assimilation, and Rosalie adopted a more Western way of life. Joseph helped set up a Presbyterian mission and school around 1860. Rosalie, like all the children of Joseph LaFlesche, began teaching until its closure in 1869. She learned English  as well as the customs of the dominant culture.

Unlike her older sister Susette and her younger sisters Susan and Marguerite, she was not sent to the eastern United States to complete her education. However, she obtained a teaching position at the new federal school on the reservation. In 1881, she married her colleague, Professor Ed Farley.

Career

The Omaha Reservation was divided into plots with the remainder being vacant. Alice C. Fletcher advises the Omahas to park only the vacant lands and to rent these lands to White farmers, or native ranchers. She appeared in court cases about the leases. [3]

Rosalie La Flesche also becomes a translator and banker of the tribe informally managing the funds allocated individually by the federal government to Native Americans. When certain Omahas , anticipating government aid, borrow money from whites or obtain credit from a store, Rosalie La Flesche carefully monitored that the monthly payments are fair. [3]

She died of a long illness on May 9, 1900 . She is buried in Bancroft Cemetery, Nebraska.[4] The town Rosalie, Nebraska was named for her.

Further reading
  • Zinn, A. (1999). The Lives of Two Very Different Native American Sisters. United States: Nebraska Wesleyan University.
  • Jacobs, Margaret D White mother to a dark race : settler colonialism, maternalism, and the removal of indigenous children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
  • Waggoner, Linda M Starring Red Wing! : the incredible career of Lilian M. St. Cyr, the first Native American film star, Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2019

References
  1. Green, Norma Kidd (1969). Iron Eye's Family: the Children of Joseph La Flesche. Johnsen Publishing Company.
  2. "LaFlesche Family". www.nebraskahistory.org. Retrieved 2021-08-21.
  3. Morin, Karen M. (2008-12-18). Frontiers of Femininity: A New Historical Geography of the Nineteenth-Century American West. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-3167-5.
  4. "Rosalie La Flesche Farley (1861-1900) - Find A..." www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2021-08-21.
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