Flashback Friday: Revisiting Tibbles

This October, the Smithsonian Collections Blog is celebrating American Archives Month with a month-long blogathon! We will be posting new content almost every weekday with the theme Discover and Connect. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.

Letter from Susette "Bright Eyes" La Flesche, 1879. Thomas H. Tibbles papers, Box 1, Folder 4.
National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.

In February of this year I wrote a blog post on the Thomas H. Tibbles papers which had been recently re-discovered. The Tibbles papers had been hidden in a larger collection and were in need of some tender love and care to make them more discoverable on their own.  Since the original post went up we have completed a finding aid, which can be viewed here, and begun the process of digitizing parts of the collection. The ultimate goal is to get some of this material up on the Smithsonian Transcription center as an inaugural project for NMAI.  The materials we are most interested in highlighting online from this collection are speeches and writings by Susette “Bright Eyes” La Flesche (Omaha). In addition to being Tibbles wife and a prominent player in the Standing Bear habeas corpus trial, La Flesche was an influential orator on Native American rights and acted as a translator and transcriber for several Ponca and Omaha chiefs. Additionally, she had lovely penmanship!

Here’s a sneak peek at a lecture given by La Flesche sometime in 1880:

Pages 1-2 of Susette "Bright Eyes" La Flesche lecture, 1880. Thomas H. Tibbles papers, Box 1, Folder 5.
National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.

Pages 3-4 of Susette "Bright Eyes" La Flesche lecture, 1880. Thomas H. Tibbles papers, Box 1, Folder 5.
National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution.

Be on the lookout for pages 5-12 in the future. Since writing the original February post the NMAI Archive Center has been contacted about this material from researchers who discovered the Tibbles collection through the Smithsonian Collections Blog. We're looking forward to sharing more discoveries throughout the month of October. Happy archives month!

Rachel Menyuk, Archives Technician
National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center