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Ella Cara Deloria was born January 31, 1889, at White Swan on the YanktonSioux Reservation in southeastern South Dakota. Her parents - she was the third daughter of Philip Deloria and the first child of his marriage to Mary Sully Bordeaux - he gave her the Dakota name Anpetu Waste, Beautiful Day. Her baptism a few weeks later on Sexagesima Sunday at White Swan's Philip the Deacon Chapel, where her father was deacon, marked her formal introduction to the Protestant Episcopal religion, a faith which was, along with her Sioux heritage, to be a major influence in her life.
The Deloria family was a large and loving one. As ealy as 1869 Ella's grandfather, Chief Frank Deloria, had reuested that an Episcopal mission be establihed among the Yankton people. His son Philip was accepted for religious training two years later and was received into the priesthood in 1891. Twice widowed - his first wife and two young sons having died of smallpox and his second wife having left him with two small daughter - Philip was married in 1888 to Mary Sully Bordeaux, a widow who also had two daughters from a previous marriage. After Ella, two more children, Susan Mabel and Vine Victor, were born to Philip and Mary. Although only of one-quarter Indian blood, Mary had been raised as a traditional Dakota, and Dakota remained the primary language in the Deloria home, an environment in which Sioux values mingled easily with Philip and Mary's devout Christian principles.
In 1890 Philip Deloria was assigned to St. Elizabeth's Church on the Standing Rock Reservation, a pastorate that served a Teton Sioux community. Ella entered the St. Elizabeth's school adjacent to the church and parsonage on the bluff overlooking the Missouri and Grand rivers. In 1902 she transferred to All Saints boarding school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. After her graduation from All Saints in 1910 she enrolled at Oberlin College. In 1913 she became a student at Columbia Teachers College, receiving a bachelor of science degree two years later.
Deloria returned to All Saints in 1915 and taught there until 1919, when she accepted a job with the YWCA as health education secretary for Indian schools and reservations. In that position she traveled widely throughout the western United States and became acquainted at frist hand with a large number of Indian groups. In 1923 she was employed by the Haskell Indian school in Lawrence, Kansas, to teach physical education and dance. Four years later Franz Boas, the preeminent American anthropologist of the time, asked Deloria to translate and edit some written texts in the Sioux language. She did so, gathering additional material as well, and in 1929 she published an article on the Sun Dance in the journal of American Folk-Lore.
Over the years, until Boas' death in 1942, deloria assisted him as a research specialist in American Indian ethnology and linguistics. Her work resulted in several books: Dakota Texts (1932), a bilingual collection of Sioux tales that stands today as the starting place for any study of Sioux dialects, mythology, or folklore; Dakota Grammar (1941), a collaboration with Boas; and Speaking of Indians (1944), a nontechnical but sophisticated description of Indian (particularly Sioux) culture. Waterlily, or at least the first draft of it, was also written during the early forties.
By the 1940s Deloria was recognized as the elading authority onthe Sioux. She continued her research, writing, lecturing, and consulting into her later years, taking time off from 1955 to 1958 to serve as director of her old school, St. Elizabeth's. From 1962 to 1966 she worked on her projects at the University of South Dakota. She lived out her last years in Vermillion and died on February 12, 1971.
The unique and irreplaceable quality of Deloria's work is reconfirmed as previously unpublished mauscripts like Waterlily come to light. Not only was she a meticulous and knowledgeable researcher; she had a deep and heartfelt understanding of - a true kinship with - those who culture she both studied and shared.
Biographical Sketch of the Author
Agnes Picotte
The Deloria family was a large and loving one. As ealy as 1869 Ella's grandfather, Chief Frank Deloria, had reuested that an Episcopal mission be establihed among the Yankton people. His son Philip was accepted for religious training two years later and was received into the priesthood in 1891. Twice widowed - his first wife and two young sons having died of smallpox and his second wife having left him with two small daughter - Philip was married in 1888 to Mary Sully Bordeaux, a widow who also had two daughters from a previous marriage. After Ella, two more children, Susan Mabel and Vine Victor, were born to Philip and Mary. Although only of one-quarter Indian blood, Mary had been raised as a traditional Dakota, and Dakota remained the primary language in the Deloria home, an environment in which Sioux values mingled easily with Philip and Mary's devout Christian principles.
In 1890 Philip Deloria was assigned to St. Elizabeth's Church on the Standing Rock Reservation, a pastorate that served a Teton Sioux community. Ella entered the St. Elizabeth's school adjacent to the church and parsonage on the bluff overlooking the Missouri and Grand rivers. In 1902 she transferred to All Saints boarding school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. After her graduation from All Saints in 1910 she enrolled at Oberlin College. In 1913 she became a student at Columbia Teachers College, receiving a bachelor of science degree two years later.
Deloria returned to All Saints in 1915 and taught there until 1919, when she accepted a job with the YWCA as health education secretary for Indian schools and reservations. In that position she traveled widely throughout the western United States and became acquainted at frist hand with a large number of Indian groups. In 1923 she was employed by the Haskell Indian school in Lawrence, Kansas, to teach physical education and dance. Four years later Franz Boas, the preeminent American anthropologist of the time, asked Deloria to translate and edit some written texts in the Sioux language. She did so, gathering additional material as well, and in 1929 she published an article on the Sun Dance in the journal of American Folk-Lore.
Over the years, until Boas' death in 1942, deloria assisted him as a research specialist in American Indian ethnology and linguistics. Her work resulted in several books: Dakota Texts (1932), a bilingual collection of Sioux tales that stands today as the starting place for any study of Sioux dialects, mythology, or folklore; Dakota Grammar (1941), a collaboration with Boas; and Speaking of Indians (1944), a nontechnical but sophisticated description of Indian (particularly Sioux) culture. Waterlily, or at least the first draft of it, was also written during the early forties.
By the 1940s Deloria was recognized as the elading authority onthe Sioux. She continued her research, writing, lecturing, and consulting into her later years, taking time off from 1955 to 1958 to serve as director of her old school, St. Elizabeth's. From 1962 to 1966 she worked on her projects at the University of South Dakota. She lived out her last years in Vermillion and died on February 12, 1971.
The unique and irreplaceable quality of Deloria's work is reconfirmed as previously unpublished mauscripts like Waterlily come to light. Not only was she a meticulous and knowledgeable researcher; she had a deep and heartfelt understanding of - a true kinship with - those who culture she both studied and shared.
Biographical Sketch of the Author
Agnes Picotte
