Camping with the Sioux: The Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher. 'In the Fall of 1881, Alice Fletcher traveled to Dakota Territory to live with Sioux women and record their way of life, accompanied by Susette La Flesche, an Omaha Indian, and journalist Thomas Henry Tibbles... '
More online anthropological collections from the Smithsonian, including selections from William Duncan Strong's 1933 Honduras Journal, and Kiowa drawings.
posted by plep on Feb 1, 2004 - 3 comments

The Ethnographic Lens: Images from the Realm of a Rain Queen. Between 1936 and 1938 social anthropologists Eileen and Jack Krige undertook intensive fieldwork in the north-eastern regions of South Africa among the Lobedu people whose chief Modjadji was widely acclaimed as a rainmaker.'
'In 1943 their book 'The Realm of a Rain Queen' was published and has remained in print ever since. Some of the photographs taken by the Kriges were used as illustrations in the book but many remained unpublished and little known ...' Via this collection of archaeological and anthropological resources from the South African Museum.
Princess Makobo Modjadji of the Bolobedu has just been crowned as the new Rain Queen, Modjadji VI. A light drizzle greeted the inauguration, which may be a good sign.
The Rain Queen was the inspiration for H. Rider Haggard's 'She Who Must Be Obeyed'.
More on the world of the Rain Queen - including biographical details on the last Rain Queen, and her relationships with politicians such as Nelson Mandela in a changine South Africa - here.
posted by plep on Apr 12, 2003 - 5 comments