Alice Cunningham Fletcher (March 15, 1838 in Havana - April 6, 1923 in Washington, DC.) was an American ethnologist, anthropologist, and social scientist who studied and documented American Indian culture. Fletcher taught school and later became a public lecturer to support herself, arguing that anthropologists and archaeologists were best at uncovering ancient history of humans. She also advocated for the education of Native Americans. Fletcher credited Frederic Ward Putnam for stimulating her interest in American Indian culture and began working with him at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. She studied the remnants of the Indian civilization in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and became a member of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879.