Francis La Flesche was born and raised on the Omaha Reservation, the son of Omaha chief Iron Eye. He met the anthropologist Alice Fletcher, one of the major influences in his life, in Washington, DC while he was accompanying the Ponca chief Standing Bear on a political tour in 1879-1880 following Standing Bear's trial in which it was determined that an Indian is a person. In 1882, when Fletcher visited the Omaha Reservation, she used La Flesche as her interpreter and informant. He went on to become her field assistant and, finally, collaborator. In 1910, he joined the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology, and retired in 1929. His major area of interest was recording Omaha and Osage cultures, languages, and music through both written documentation and cylinder recordings.