With The Nez Perces: Alice Fletcher In The Field, 1889-92

This book you are about to read is a unique document. It is a record of the adventure of two remarkable women and also a lens through which one can observe many of the forces and ideas that shaped American society in the late nineteenth century.

In 1889 the U.S. government sent the anthropologist Alice Fletcher to Idaho to allot the Nez Perce Reservation. She was accompanied by E. Jane Gay, who served as cook, housekeeper, photographer, and general factotum. In this collection of her letters, Gay describes in sprightly fashion their encounters with feuding agents, hostile white squatters, and a Nez Perce tribe divided over and puzzled by this latest government program.