Ella Cara Deloria

Ella Cara Deloria (born January 31, 1889, White Swan, Yankton Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, U.S.—died February 12, 1971, Tripp, South Dakota) was a Dakota Sioux scholar, ethnographer, writer, and translator who was a critically important recorder of Sioux culture and languages at a time when the traditional culture was in danger of being lost.

Both Deloria’s parents were of mixed Euro-American and Yankton Sioux descent. Her paternal grandfather was a tribal leader, and one of her maternal great-grandfathers was the artist Thomas Sully. Deloria’s father had converted to Christianity and, as a result, in 1890 he became the head of St. Elizabeth’s Church and boarding school in the more northerly (and Lakota) Standing Rock Reservation. A few years later he became one of the first Native Americans to be ordained in the Episcopal church.

Her father’s occupation had a great influence on her early life. Not only did she grow up speaking Lakota (though she spoke Dakota with her family), but she attended Episcopal schools until she started Oberlin (Ohio) College (1910–13) and Teachers College, Columbia University (B.S., 1915). While at Columbia, she started a long association with prominent anthropologist Franz Boas. After graduating from college, Deloria taught for four years (1915–19) at All Saints School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; worked with the YMCA on a health education program for Indian schools; and went to Lawrence, Kansas (1923), where she taught dance and won renown for her physical education program. In 1927 she started on a 15-year research and writing program with Boas, and later Ruth Benedict, that resulted in a number of significant publications. Her English translation of a Lakota text,“Sun Dance of the Oglala Sioux,” saw print in the 1929 edition of the Journal of American Folklore. There soon followed Dakota Texts (1932, reprinted 2006), Dakota Grammar (1941, reprinted 2011), and Speaking of Indians (1944, reissued 1998). Her body of work stands today as a foundation for the study of Sioux dialects, myths, and ethnography.

In addition to her scholarly anthropological work, she wrote the novel Waterlily (completed in 1948, but not published until 1988) about the daily life of a Teton Sioux woman. The book, published posthumously, was an attempt to introduce Native American culture to non-scholars and non-Natives.