Author and Native American Activist. He was born in New York City and grew up in Newport, Rhode Island. He took an interest in Native Americans as a boy. He attended Harvard University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree and his Master's degree. While at Harvard he wrote several anthropological, ethnological and sociological works on Native Americans. He took part in archaeological and ethnological expeditions to Arizona, Mexico and Guatemala, and also studied sites in Central America and the American Southwest. In addition to a number of scholarly works, mostly about Native Americans, he wrote several novels. His first novel, Laughing Boy, was published in 1929. A story of the clash of two cultures, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1929. He also published the novels Sparks Fly Upward in 1931, The Enemy Gods in 1937, Long Pennant in 1933, and The Copper Pot in 1942. His short stories were collected in All the Young Men in 1935, and in A Pause in the Desert in 1957. His autobiography, Raw Material, was published in 1945. He also had short stories published in The New Yorker and Esquire. He married heiress Wanden Matthews and had two children with her, but they divorced in1937. Although highly respected in this field, he abandoned his studies to publicize the Native Americans’ troubles, serving as president of the National Association on Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1937, and as president of the Association on American Indian Affairs from 1937 to 1942, and again from 1946 to 1963. During World War II, he served with the U.S. Air Transport Command, ending service with the rank of major. He participated with the Battle for Greenland, commanded by Colonel Bernt Balchen. Balchen, together with Corey Ford and La Farge, wrote War Below Zero: The Battle for Greenland in 1944 about the actions to defend Greenland. He married a second time, to Consuelo Otile Baca. His non-fiction book, Behind The Mountains, published in 1956, is based on his memories of Consuelo's family, who were ranchers in northern New Mexico. He wrote a regular column for the Santa Fe newspaper, The New Mexican. Some of his columns were collected and published as The Man With the Calabash Pipe.