La Farge, << luh FAHRZH, >> Oliver (1901-1963), was an American author and anthropologist. La Farge was best known for his novels and short stories about Native American life in the American Southwest and in Central America. He also wrote studies of Native American ceremonies, customs, and languages. La Farge became a leading spokesman for the rights of Native Americans in the United States.
La Farge received the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his first novel, Laughing Boy (1929). The book describes a Navajo man’s problems adapting to white society. La Farge’s other fiction about Native Americans includes the novels Sparks Fly Upward (1931), The Enemy Gods (1937), and the stories collected in All the Young Men (1935). One of La Farge’s major anthropological works is Tribes and Temples (1927), written with the American anthropologist Frans Blom. The book describes the Maya language.
Oliver Hazard Perry La Farge was born in New York City on Dec. 19, 1901. During the 1920’s, he made several archaeological expeditions to Arizona, Mexico, and Guatemala to study Native American culture. La Farge was also active in a number of organizations devoted to improving the life of Native Americans. La Farge settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, about 1940. He died on Aug. 2, 1963.
