Oliver La Farge

American novelist Oliver La Farge was born in New York in 1901, the son of an architect, into a distinguished family. His ancestors include American Revolution figure Benjamin Franklin and US Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. His grandfather was noted artist and stained-glass specialist John La Farge and his brother is writer Christopher LaFarge. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in 1924 and received his M.A. there in 1929. He was an editor of "The Harvard Lampoon". La Farge had taken an interest in American Indians as a small boy--his nickname was "Indian Man"--and at Harvard he wrote several highly regarded anthropological, ethnological and sociological works on Indians. He took part in three archaeological expeditions to Arizona for Harvard, two ethnological expeditions to Mexico and Guatemala for Tulane University and one to Guatemala for Columbia University. Most of La Farge's stories and novels center around Indians, especially the Navajos. His first novel, "Laughing Boy", won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 and was later filmed as Laughing Boy (1934). He died in Albuquerque, NM, in 1963.