Ella Cara Deloria
Encyclopedia
Ella Cara Deloria also called Ąnpétu Wašté Wįn (Beautiful Day Woman), was an educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist
, and novel
ist of Yankton Sioux background. She recorded Sioux oral history
and legend
s, and in the 1940s wrote a novel, Waterlily
, finally published in 1988.
, North Dakota
. Her parents were Mary Anne Bordeaux Deloria and Philip Joseph Deloria, the family having Yankton Dakota Sioux, English
, and French
roots. (The family name goes back to a French trapper ancestor named Delaurier.) Her father was one of the first Sioux to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Although Ella was the first child to the couple, they each had seven daughters by previous marriages; she was followed by twenty further children.
Deloria was brought up on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation
, at Wakpala
, and was educated first at her father's mission school
and All Saints Boarding School in Sioux Falls, and then – after a brief period at the University of Chicago
– at Oberlin College
, Ohio
, to which she had won a scholarship. After two years at Oberlin she transferred to Teachers College, Columbia University
, New York
, and graduated with a B.Sc. in 1915.
Throughout her professional life, she suffered from not having the money or the free time necessary to take an advanced degree, largely because of her commitment to the support of her family; her parents were elderly, and her sister suffered from brain tumours. In addition to her work in anthropology (of which more below), Deloria had a number of jobs, including teaching (dance and physical education), lecturing and giving demonstrations (on Native American culture
), working for the Camp Fire Girls
and for the YWCA
, and holding positions at the Sioux Indian Museum in Rapid City, South Dakota
, and (as assistant director) the W.H. Over Museum in Vermillion
. Her nephew was the writer and intellectual, Vine Deloria, Jr.
Deloria had a stroke
in 1970, dying the following year of pneumonia
.
while at Teachers College, and began a professional association with him until his death in 1942, also working with his students Margaret Mead
and Ruth Benedict
. She had the advantage for her work on Native American culture of fluency in both the Yankton and Lakota dialects of Sioux
, both of which she had used as a child, as well as the eastern dialect of Sioux (in addition to English
and Latin).
Her linguistic abilities and her intimate knowledge of traditional and Christianised Sioux culture, together with her deep commitment both to Native American culture and to scholarship, allowed Deloria to carry out important, often ground-breaking work in anthropology and ethnology, as well as to produce translations in to English of historical and scholarly texts in Sioux (such as the Lakota texts of George Bushotter and the Santee
texts of Gideon and Samuel Pond). She was compiling a Sioux dictionary at the time of her death.
In 1938-39, she was part of a small group of researchers hired to construct a socioeconomic study on the Navajo Reservation for the Bureau of Indian Affairs that was funded by the Phelps Strokes Fund. This study resulted in a report, The Navajo Indian Problem, that was published. This well received project opened the door for her to receive more speaking engagements and funding to continue her important work on native languages. In 1940, she and a sister went to Pembroke, North Carolina to conduct some research among the Lumbee tribe, again with financial backing from the Bureau of Indian Affairs backing. The Lumbees were in the process of pursuing federal recognition and Deloria believed she could make an important contribution to their effort by studying their distinctive culture and language. In her study, she diligently conducted interviews with Lumbee women about plants, food, medicine, and animal names. And she also conducted a comparative study between some of the native languages and Lumee slang words. She came very close to completing a dictionary of their original language before the addition of English and various other language phrases. She also assembled two successful pageants for and about the Lumbee people in 1940 and 1941 that depicted their origin account that allegedly connects the Lumbee to the Lost Colony of the Outer Banks region.
Deloria won the Indian Achievement Award in 1943, and was the recipient of grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (1948) and the National Science Foundation
(1960s).
In 2010, the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University
, Deloria's alma mater
, established the Ella C. Deloria Undergraduate Research Fellowship in her honor.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, and novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist of Yankton Sioux background. She recorded Sioux oral history
Oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...
and legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
s, and in the 1940s wrote a novel, Waterlily
Waterlily (novel)
Waterlily is a novel by Ella Cara Deloria.-Waterlily Overview:Waterlily was written by Deloria in the early 1940s but was not published until 1988, eighteen years after her death...
, finally published in 1988.
Life
Deloria was born in the White Swan district of the Yankton Indian ReservationYankton Indian Reservation
The Yankton Indian Reservation is the homeland of the Yankton subgroup of the Sioux tribe of Native Americans.The reservation occupies the southeasternmost 60 percent of Charles Mix County in southeastern South Dakota, United States...
, North Dakota
North Dakota
North Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Canada to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th-largest state by area in the U.S....
. Her parents were Mary Anne Bordeaux Deloria and Philip Joseph Deloria, the family having Yankton Dakota Sioux, English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
, and French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
roots. (The family name goes back to a French trapper ancestor named Delaurier.) Her father was one of the first Sioux to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Although Ella was the first child to the couple, they each had seven daughters by previous marriages; she was followed by twenty further children.
Deloria was brought up on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation
Standing Rock Indian Reservation
The Standing Rock Indian Reservation is a Lakota, Yanktonai and Dakota Indian reservation in North Dakota and South Dakota in the United States...
, at Wakpala
Wakpala, South Dakota
Wakpala is an unincorporated community in Corson County, South Dakota, United States. Although not tracked by the Census Bureau, Wakpala has been assigned the ZIP code of 57658. Wakpala is within the boundaries of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and its name loosely translates to "creek" in...
, and was educated first at her father's mission school
Mission School
The Mission School is an art movement of the 1990s and 2000s, centered in the Mission District of San Francisco, California.-History and characteristics:...
and All Saints Boarding School in Sioux Falls, and then – after a brief period at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
– at Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, to which she had won a scholarship. After two years at Oberlin she transferred to Teachers College, Columbia University
Teachers College, Columbia University
Teachers College, Columbia University is a graduate school of education located in New York City, New York...
, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and graduated with a B.Sc. in 1915.
Throughout her professional life, she suffered from not having the money or the free time necessary to take an advanced degree, largely because of her commitment to the support of her family; her parents were elderly, and her sister suffered from brain tumours. In addition to her work in anthropology (of which more below), Deloria had a number of jobs, including teaching (dance and physical education), lecturing and giving demonstrations (on Native American culture
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
), working for the Camp Fire Girls
Camp Fire USA
Camp Fire USA, originally Camp Fire Girls of America, is a nationwide American youth organization that began in 1910. The organization has been co-ed since 1975 and welcomes youth from pre-kindergarten through age 21. Camp Fire was the first nonsectarian, multicultural organization for girls in...
and for the YWCA
YWCA
The YWCA USA is the United States branch of a women's membership movement that strives to create opportunities for women's growth, leadership and power in order to attain a common vision—to eliminate racism and empower women. The YWCA is a non-profit organization, the first of which was founded in...
, and holding positions at the Sioux Indian Museum in Rapid City, South Dakota
Rapid City, South Dakota
Rapid City is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of South Dakota, and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek on which the city is established, it is set against the eastern slope of the Black Hills mountain range. The population was 67,956 as of the 2010 Census. Rapid...
, and (as assistant director) the W.H. Over Museum in Vermillion
Vermillion, South Dakota
Vermillion is a city in and the county seat of Clay County, in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of South Dakota, and the tenth largest city in the state. According to the 2010 Census, the population was 10,571. Vermillion lies atop a bluff near the Missouri River.The area has been home to...
. Her nephew was the writer and intellectual, Vine Deloria, Jr.
Vine Deloria, Jr.
Vine Deloria, Jr. was an American Indian author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto , which helped generate national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement...
Deloria had a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
in 1970, dying the following year of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
.
Work and achievements
Deloria met Franz BoasFranz Boas
Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...
while at Teachers College, and began a professional association with him until his death in 1942, also working with his students Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....
and Ruth Benedict
Ruth Benedict
Ruth Benedict was an American anthropologist, cultural relativist, and folklorist....
. She had the advantage for her work on Native American culture of fluency in both the Yankton and Lakota dialects of Sioux
Sioux language
Sioux is a Siouan language spoken by over 33,000 Sioux in the United States and Canada, making it the fifth most spoken indigenous language in the United States or Canada, behind Navajo, Cree, Inuit and Ojibwe.-Regional variation:...
, both of which she had used as a child, as well as the eastern dialect of Sioux (in addition to English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Latin).
Her linguistic abilities and her intimate knowledge of traditional and Christianised Sioux culture, together with her deep commitment both to Native American culture and to scholarship, allowed Deloria to carry out important, often ground-breaking work in anthropology and ethnology, as well as to produce translations in to English of historical and scholarly texts in Sioux (such as the Lakota texts of George Bushotter and the Santee
Santee
Santee may refer to:Places:* Santee, California* Santee, Nebraska* Santee, South Carolina* Santee River in South Carolina* Santee Education ComplexPlumbing:...
texts of Gideon and Samuel Pond). She was compiling a Sioux dictionary at the time of her death.
In 1938-39, she was part of a small group of researchers hired to construct a socioeconomic study on the Navajo Reservation for the Bureau of Indian Affairs that was funded by the Phelps Strokes Fund. This study resulted in a report, The Navajo Indian Problem, that was published. This well received project opened the door for her to receive more speaking engagements and funding to continue her important work on native languages. In 1940, she and a sister went to Pembroke, North Carolina to conduct some research among the Lumbee tribe, again with financial backing from the Bureau of Indian Affairs backing. The Lumbees were in the process of pursuing federal recognition and Deloria believed she could make an important contribution to their effort by studying their distinctive culture and language. In her study, she diligently conducted interviews with Lumbee women about plants, food, medicine, and animal names. And she also conducted a comparative study between some of the native languages and Lumee slang words. She came very close to completing a dictionary of their original language before the addition of English and various other language phrases. She also assembled two successful pageants for and about the Lumbee people in 1940 and 1941 that depicted their origin account that allegedly connects the Lumbee to the Lost Colony of the Outer Banks region.
Deloria won the Indian Achievement Award in 1943, and was the recipient of grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (1948) and the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
(1960s).
In 2010, the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Deloria's alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
, established the Ella C. Deloria Undergraduate Research Fellowship in her honor.
Fiction
- 1988: Waterlily (reprinted 1990, University of Nebraska Press; ISBN 0-8032-6579-4)
- 1993: Ella Deloria's Iron Hawk (single narrative, ed. Julian Rice. University of New Mexico Press; ISBN 0-8263-1447-3)
- 1994: Ella Deloria's the Buffalo People (collection of stories, ed. Julian Rice. University of New Mexico Press; ISBN 0-8263-1507-0)
Non-fiction
- 1928: The Wohpe Festival: Being an All-Day Celebration, Consisting of Ceremonials, Games, Dances and Songs, in Honor of Wohpe, One of the Four Superior Gods... Games, of Adornment and of Little Children
- 1929: The Sun Dance of the Oglala Sioux (American Folklore SocietyAmerican Folklore SocietyThe American Folklore Society is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world. It was founded in 1888 by William Wells Newell, who stood at the center of a diverse group of university-based scholars, museum anthropologists, and men...
) - 1932: Dakota Texts (reprinted 2006, Bison Books; ISBN 0-8032-6660-X)
- 1941: Dakota Grammar (with Franz Boas) (National Academy of SciencesUnited States National Academy of SciencesThe National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
; reprinted 1976, AMS Press, ISBN 0-4041-1829-1) - 1944: Speaking of Indians (reprinted 1998, University of Nebraska Press; ISBN 0-8032-6614-6)
Sources and further reading
- Jan Ullrich, New Lakota Dictionary. (2008, Lakota Language Consortium). ISBN 0-9761082-9-1. (includes a detailed chapter on Deloria's contribution to the study of the Lakota language)
- Julian Rice, Deer Women and Elk Men: The Lakota Narratives of Ella Deloria (1992, University of New Mexico Press; ISBN 0-8263-1362-0)
- Raymond A. BuckoRaymond A. BuckoRaymond A. Bucko, S. J., is an American Jesuit priest and anthropologist noted for his work among the Lakota Indians.Bucko received his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1992 from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Raymond D...
, "Ella Cara Deloria", in Encyclopedia of AnthropologyEncyclopedia of AnthropologyThe Encyclopedia of Anthropology is an encyclopedia of anthropology edited by H. James Birx of Canisius College and SUNY Geneseo.The encyclopedia, published in 2006 by SAGE Publications, is in five volumes, and contains over 1,200 articles by more than 300 contributors...
ed. H. James BirxH. James BirxH. James Birx is an American anthropologist.Birx received his M.A. in anthropology and his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, and is now professor of anthropology at Canisius College, as well as Distinguished research Scholar in the SUNY Geneseo's...
(2006, SAGE Publications; ISBN 0-7619-3029-9) - Janette Murray, Ella Deloria: A Biographical Sketch and Literary Analysis (Ph.D. thesis, 1974 — University of North Dakota)
- Anne Ruggles Gere, "Indian Heart/White Man's Head: Native-American Teachers in Indian Schools, 1880–1930" (History of Education Quarterly 45:1, Spring 2005)
- Cotera, María Eugenia. Native Speakers: Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Jovita González, And the Poetics of Culture. Array Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
- Deloria, Ella Cara. Waterlily. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.
- Gibbon, Guy E. The Sioux: the Dakota And Lakota Nations. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2003.
- Rosenfelt, W. E. The Last Buffalo: Cultural Views of the Plains Indians: the Sioux Or Dakota Nation. Minneapolis: Denison, 1973.
- Sligh, Gary Lee. A Study of Native American Women Novelists: Sophia Alice Callahan, Mourning Dove, And Ella Cara Deloria. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.