Joseph La Flesche - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

LaFlesche married Mary Gale (b. c. 1825-1826 - d. c. 1855), daughter of Dr. John Gale, a surgeon at Fort Atkinson, and his Iowa wife Ni-co-ma. Gale was reassigned when the Army left the fort in 1827, and he left Ni-co-ma and Mary behind with her family.

Joseph and Mary LaFlesche had five children together: Louis, Susette, Rosalie, Marguerite and Susan. Iron Eye and Mary believed that the future of American Indians lay in education and assimilation, including adoption of European-style agricultural methods and acceptance of Christianity. They encouraged their children to get educations and work for their people; in some cases, LaFlesche sent them to schools in the East.

After Mary died (about 1855-1856), the widower Joseph LaFlesche married Ta-in-ne, an Omaha woman also known as Elizabeth Erasmus. They had a son Francis, born in 1857, followed by other children.

Mary's grown children included the activists Susette LaFlesche Tibbles; and Rosalie LaFlesche Farley, financial manager of the Omaha tribe; Marguerite La Flesche Picotte, who became a teacher on the Yankton Sioux Reservation; and the physician Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American woman in the United States to be certified as a doctor. Susan worked with the Omaha and eventually established the first privately funded hospital on an Indian reservation for them. Rosalie Farley helped negotiate grazing treaties on unallocated land to generate revenue and helped tribal members with their finances, including managing donations sent from Americans across the country. She also worked with an ethnologist from the University of Pennsylvania to collect traditions and stories from the tribes.

Their half-brother Francis La Flesche, son of Ta-in-nne, became an ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institution, studying the Omaha and the Osage. Although the siblings came to hold differing opinions on the issues related to land allotment and assimilation, they each worked to improve the quality of life for Native Americans, particularly the Omaha in Nebraska.