Bringing Books to a Book-Hungry Land : Print Culture on the Dakota Prairie

The dearth of reading material was a recurring lament in the writings and memoirs of Dakota settlers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “I was born with a desire to read, . . . and I have never gotten over it,” declared Henry Theodore Washburn, recalling his Minnesota boyhood and homesteading years in Dakota Territory, “but there was no way in those days to gratify that desire to any great extent.”1 This lack was indeed of consequence. In the pre-electronic era, print was a primary means of obtaining information, insight, and pleasure. High rates of literacy, sharp increases in book production, and falling costs all contributed to the pervasiveness of the printed word. Whether it promoted particular values or challenged them, reading played a vital role in shaping how individuals assigned meaning to their lives. Governing what and how much was read were geographical location, environment, economic conditions, educational levels, and amount of leisure time. For many early South Dakota settlers, reading was certainly not a prime activity or even a real option. Those who did actively involve themselves in the culture of print were variously motivated. From ordinary rural dwellers, to the educated elite, to book publishers and sellers, each had an agenda—whether to strive for cultural improvement, spread “right ideals,” make a quick profit, or simply eke out a living. In any case, getting books to remote regions required initiative and perseverance. A historical examination of South Dakota’s print culture, focusing on the experiences of those who supplied reading material and those who received it, can afford a valuable glimpse into the cultural aspirations and attitudes of a rural population in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America

A Woman of Her Time: Dr. Frances Woods and the Intersection of War, Expansionism and Equal Rights

\u27Started to Manila\u27, headlined the Oregonian newspaper on 18 August 1898, \u27Two Portland Nurses Take Their Leave.\u27 Dr. Frances Woods, along with fellow Portland, Oregon resident Lena Killiam, was on her way to the Philippines to serve in the Spanish-American War. Eager to take part, but knowing she would never be allowed to go as a woman doctor, Dr. Woods grasped the option of volunteering as a nurse. \u27I feel just as patriotic and earnest as a man\u27, she declared. \u27But, you know, they have a way of turning aside lady physicians and giving men the first chances to go to the front. I wanted to go to the war from the first. This was my first chance and I gladly accepted it\u27. Woods\u27 war service would help shape her world views and the course of her career, drawing her into the public arena as a lecturer and suffragist. Her attitudes and experiences were deeply entwined with the fabric of her times. Late nineteenth-century American thinking about the war and about citizenship turned upon perceptions of race, rights, gender, and patriotism. All of these ideas were bolstered by the experiences and image of a vigorous westward-expanding nation. As a white woman of privilege who viewed herself as a patriot and activist, Woods seized upon the emerging opportunities of her era and developed her own complex, often contradictory, perspectives toward the war, expansionism, and equal rights. A study of her life experiences and their intersection with the central political and gender issues of her day opens a unique and personal window on the America of the turn of the twentieth century

Searching for Sissa

Nothing is certain but uncertainty. This old proverb aptly sums up my experiences in searching for the ancestry of my great great grandmother Sissa. Confronted with frustrating obstacles and apparent dead ends, I have considered abandoning the search. And yet, the trail lures me on. At the outset, I knew only a few stark facts. Sissa, born in Sweden, had emigrated to America, eventually settling in central Kansas. Here, she died in 1887, at the age of 41, leaving her husband and ten children, ranging in age from two weeks to seventeen years. This information came from family recollections and from gravestones in the Salemsborg Lutheran Church Cemetery in Saline County, Kansas, where Sissa, her husband Nels, and six children are buried.1 I began my search several years ago by gathering relevant materials saved by various descendants of Sissa and Nels. Most valuable were obituaries for Nels (who died in 1935,48 years after Sissa) and family Bibles originally owned by two of Sissa\u27s daughters, Jennie and Ida. One of the obituaries gave me a seemingly important clue about Sissa\u27s ancestry - her maiden name was Bengtson. The obituaries and the Bibles further revealed that Nels, emigrating from Gammalstorp in Blekinge, Sweden in 1869, had married Sissa in Galesburg, Illinois. Three years later, after a brief sojourn in Lewiston, Illinois, and the birth of two daughters, the family pioneered in Saline County, Kansas

Conquering a Wilderness: Destruction and Development on the Great Plains in Mari Sandoz\u27s Old Jules

Jules Ami Sandoz came to America in 1881 at the age of 22. Following a three-year sojourn in northeastern Nebraska, he headed further west, settling in the recently surveyed region northwest of the Nebraska Sandhills. In Old Jules, the biography of her pioneer father, Mari Sandoz presented a character filled with conflicts and contradictions. Pitted against Jules\u27s dynamic vision of community growth was his self-centered and destructive nature. Well aware of the more unsavory qualities exhibited by her father. Sandoz nonetheless maintained that he and others like him were necessary to the development of the West. This recognition did not preclude Sandoz from deploring the cultural devastation suffered by the Native Americans in the face of westward expansion. She saw the destruction of the Plains Indians\u27 way of life as an irrevocable loss not only for the Native Americans but for the immigrant populations as well. Through her candid depiction of Jules\u27s personality and his complex relations with the inhabitants of the Niobrara region of Nebraska in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sandoz effectively conveyed her theory of the varied and paradoxical forces which shaped the history of the Great Plains

Lot 1, Block 4: Searching for the Grave of Anthony Morse

My fascination with family history began with my maternal grandmother’s stories. As a child, I loved quizzing her about the lives of her parents and grandparents, prodding her to reach as far back as she could into her memory and family lineage to tell me their stories. Her ancestors, English, Scottish, and French, had come to North America in the first half of the seventeenth century. Settling in the British colonies and New France, they participated in many of the events and movements that shaped the continent. The family tales my grandmother told focused on deeds of female heroism, male soldiery, and the pioneering experience. Admittedly, not all of these stories can be verified. Passed down from generation to generation, they have inevitably become embellished and distorted. Nevertheless, I was and still am captivated by them. Through these stories, history comes alive for me and I feel a sense of connectedness with the past

RECASTING EPIC TRADITION THE DISPOSSESSED AS HERO IN SANDOZ\u27S \u3ci\u3eCRAZY HORSE\u3c/i\u3e AND \u3ci\u3eCHEYENNE AUTUMN\u3c/i\u3e

Although Mari Sandoz is perhaps best known for the biography of her Nebraska pioneer father, Old Jules (1935), her two other biographies, Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas (1942) and Cheyenne Autumn (1953), equally convey her distinctive historical vision of the American West. In these two works, Sandoz rewrites traditional epic formula, taking the perspective of the dispossessed Lakotas and Cheyennes and recounting not the growth and expansion of a culture, but its conquest. In spite of material defeat at the hands of dominant white society, her Native American leaders assume heroic stature, striving against all odds to preserve their people and culture