Tallchief, Maria (24 January 1925–11 April 2013), ballerina, was born Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief in Fairfax, Oklahoma, the elder daughter of Joseph Tall Chief, a member of the Osage tribe, and Ruth Porter, a tiny woman of Scots-Irish heritage. The Tall Chiefs’ second daughter, Marjorie, twenty-one months younger than her sister, also became an internationally successful ballerina. Neither parent held a conventional job; the commercial development of oil in Oklahoma at the end of the nineteenth century brought immediate riches to the Osage tribe, and, while the family lived in Fairfax, Joseph spent his time managing his own properties there....
