Ethnologist, folklorist, and writer. Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, Owen developed a
lifelong interest in the folktales she heard in her youth from the African Americans,
Native Americans, and other cultural groups in the St. Joseph area. She was educated in
private schools and attended Vassar College in 1868–1869. On her return to St. Joseph,
she began her writing career with columns on early settlers for the St. Joseph Saturday
Democrat and later published short stories in Century magazine and Overland Monthly.
Continuing her collecting activities, Owen worked extensively among the Indian tribes
across the Missouri River from St. Joseph, often spending several days at a time with
them. Many years later, she wrote in a notebook, now with a collection of her artifacts in
the Missouri State Museum in Jefferson City, “I dare say I was a hundred times among
the Musquakie between 1881 and 1898.… I had much trouble getting my collection. We
were always dodging those white idiots the government sent out. They seemed to think
dancing was devil worship. Folklore and ethnology had not made much headway then.”
After reading Charles Godfrey Leland’s Algonquin Legends of New England (1884),
Owen realized that she had heard some of the same stories in northwest Missouri and
northeast Kansas. She sent him a selection of her tales, and Leland encouraged her to
continue her work. At his suggestion, she attended the 1891 International Folklore
Conference in London, where she presented a paper on “Missouri Negro Traditions,”
which was enthusiastically received and resulted in the publication of her first book, Old
Rabbit the Voodoo and Other Sorcerers ([1893] 1969). In preparing her book for
publication, she depended on Leland for advice but resisted his pleas not to use dialect so
that the tales would be comprehensible to English readers, believing it was important to
render the language in which the tales were told as accurately as possible.
Continuing correspondence with the Folk-Lore Society of England about her work
among the Native American tribes in the St. Joseph area led to the publication of her
second book, Folk-Lore of the Musquakie Indians of North America and Catalog of
Musquakie Beadwork and other Objects in the Collection of the Folk-Lore Society
(1904). Owen was an honorary member of the Sac Indian tribe and of the Folk-Lore
Society of England as well as a life member and councilor of the American Folklore
Society and active in numerous other societies concerned with folklore research. When
the Missouri FolkLore Society was established by H.M.Belden in 1906, she became a
charter member. She served as president of the society from 1908 until her death in 1935,
developed an active St. Joseph group of society members, and presented numerous papers
on an eclectic range of subjects at society meetings. She was never able to get together
the collection of African American and Native American tales promised Belden, but
when his Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society was finally
published in 1940, it was dedicated to her in recognition of her many contributions to the
society and her achievements as a folklorist. She was responsible for the collection of a
body of tales and the documentation of folk practices that would have been lost without
her pioneering efforts.
Rebecca B.Schroeder
References
Allcorn, Mary Elizabeth. 1986. Mary Alicia Owen: Missouri Folklorist. Missouri Folklore Society
Journal 8–9:71–78.
McNeil, William K. 1980. Mary Alicia Owen: Collector of Afro-American and Indian Lore in
Missouri. Missouri Folklore Society Journal 2:1–14.
Owen, MaryAlicia. [1893] 1969. Old Rabbit the Voodoo and Other Sorcerers. New York: Negro
University Press.
——. 1920. Social Customs and Usages in Missouri During the Last Century. Missouri Historical
Review. 14:176–190.