Background

Oliver Hazard Perry La Farge was born in New York City, the son of Christopher Grant La Farge and Florence Bayard Lockwood. He spent his childhood in Rhode Island. His architect father inspired an interest in the arts, and as a woodsman he initiated La Farge's lifelong interest in American Indians.

Education

La Farge graduated from Groton in 1920, then entered Harvard. He received both his Bachelor of Arts degree (1924) and his master's degree (1929) from Harvard University.

Career

While studying at Harvard La Farge edited the Advocate, worked on the Lampoon, and rowed on the varsity crew for two years. He also became interested in anthropology and in 1924 he participated in his third expedition for Harvard to Navajo country. In 1925 he accepted a position as assistant in ethnology at Tulane University.

While working as a linguist and ethnologist, La Farge wrote fiction. His first commercial short story appeared in The Dial in 1927, the year that he and Frans Blom published Tribes and Temples, an ethnology of Guatemalan Indians. He began Laughing Boy, the novel that was to make him famous, at this time.

After his postgraduate studies, La Farge accepted a research associateship at the University of Pennsylvania museum (1929 - 1931). La Farge's career as an author was firmly established after publishing his "Laughing Boy" and "Haunted Ground".

He settled in New York City to follow an expensive, leisurely life that his autobiography records with regret. In 1931, La Farge completed his second novel, Sparks Fly Upward, a story of romance and revolution set in Central America. It marks a turn toward a more liberal outlook coinciding with his becoming a director of the Eastern Association on Indian Affairs in 1930.

Continuing his ethnological work as a research associate in anthropology at Columbia University (1931 - 1933), La Farge led a Columbia expedition to Guatemala in 1932. His research centered on the Mayan calendar and its associated ritual. Interest in the practical politics of Indian affairs balanced this scholarly pursuit. La Farge became president of the Eastern Association on Indian Affairs (1933 - 1937), increased its membership, and changed its name to the National Association on Indian Affairs. After differences between it and the American Indian Defense Association were reconciled, the two merged into the Association on American Indian Affairs in 1937, with La Farge as president. Except for service in the army during World War II, he held this post until his death.

During the 1930's, a period La Farge regarded as wasted, he published The Year Bearer's People (1931), an ethnology written with Douglas Byers; Long Pennant (1933), a novel about the War of 1812; and All the Young Men (1935), a collection of his short stories. In 1937 The Enemy Gods, a novel that La Farge liked more than Laughing Boy, appeared.

La Farge often visited the Southwest but retained a base in New York, where he worked on Indian affairs and taught writing at Columbia University (1936 - 1941). During the next two years he compiled two influential books about the conditions of contemporary Indians: As Long as the Grass Shall Grow (1940) and The Changing Indian (1942).

In 1942 La Farge joined the U. S. Army and was commissioned in its Air Transport Command. He served as its historian and wrote a popular history, The Eagle in the Egg (1949). Several short stories about his wartime experiences appeared in War Below Zero (1944), written with Bernt Balchen and Corey Ford. He was discharged with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

La Farge's autobiography, Raw Material, was published in 1945. In 1948 he resumed presidency of the Association on American Indian Affairs, sometimes working with the commissioner of Indian affairs and at other times strongly opposing his policies. He lived with his wife's family in Santa Fe, where he wrote a weekly column for the New Mexican. Selections from these newspaper columns were published in Santa Fe (1959) and The Man with the Calabash Pipe (1966).

In 1951 La Farge wrote The White Shell Cross, a dance drama, following it with the juvenile books Cochise of Arizona (1953) and The Mother Ditch (1955). He also assembled A Pictorial History of the American Indian (1956). La Farge often differed sharply with the Truman administration over Indian affairs. His wife's family campaigned for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, but within a year of Eisenhower's election La Farge engaged in a bitter struggle with his administration. Previously La Farge's concerns had been mostly for southwestern Indians. He opposed Eisenhower's "termination policy, " an attempt to end all special rights of Indians. Advocacy of such rights made La Farge a protector of Indian education, health care, and certain legal rights. In joining Indians in their opposition to the policy, La Farge truly became the "Indian Man" (a childhood nickname). A heavy smoker, La Farge experienced increasing difficulty in breathing. After several treatments he died in Albuquerque of a collapsed lung.

Achievements

• La Farge was known as an explorer of early Olmec sites in Mexico, sites in Central America and the American Southwest. In addition to more than 15 scholarly works, mostly about Native Americans, he wrote several novels. In addition, La Farge's short stories were published in the magazines The New Yorker and Esquire. His more notable works, both fiction and non-fiction, emphasize Native American culture. His novel "Laughing Boy", which appeared in 1929, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and his short story "Haunted Ground" won the O. Henry Memorial Prize in 1930. He also became a champion for American Indian rights.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Behind the Mountains

    (With the powerful simplicity that characterizes the Pulit...)

  • The Mother Ditch (English and Spanish Edition)

    (The mother ditch, or acequia madre, is the main water lin...)

  • A Pictorial History of the American Indian

    (Discusses the distinctive culture and lifestyles of North...)

  • THE EAGLE IN THE EGG

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story

    ( Capturing the essence of the Southwest in 1915, Oliver ...)

  • The American Indian (A De luxe golden book)

    (A very good copy with a bit of wear to head of spine in a...)

  • Yellow Sun, Bright Sky: The Indian Country Stories of Oliver LA Farge

    (A collection of short stories reflects the author's love ...)

  • Raw Material (Southwest Heritage) by Oliver La Farge (2008-12-20)
  • The Copper Pot
  • Santa Fe :the Autobiography of a Southwestern Town

Connections

La Farge married Wanden E. Mathews on September 28, 1929. They had two children. The marriage ended in divorce in 1937. On October 14, 1939, he married Consuelo Otille Cabeza de Baca. They had one son.

Father:

Christopher Grant La Farge

Architect

Mother:

Florence Bayard Lockwood

Spouse:

Wanden E. Mathews

Spouse:

Consuelo Otille Cabeza de Baca

References

• Oliver La Farge and the American Indian
• Oliver La Farge, (Twayne's United States authors series, TUSAS 191)
• Oliver La Farge, (Southwest writers series)