No comments about Guenther: A family history, 1761-1992.

2 comments about The Last Link: Dakota Territory, Logan County, 1887: Old North Dakota Memories: The Weispfennings and Muellers: Our Early American Experiences in Dakota Territory.

1. Book review by Edna Boardman, Bismarck, North Dakota
   
   In a series of 45 stand-alone essays, some originally printed in other works, Mueller skillfully connects 21st-century readers to a time of pioneering on the North Dakota prairie. My stomach tightened as I recalled living many of his stories of hard work on the farm: making things yourself and doing without modern amenities, caring for animals and eating what you produced yourself, haying and harvesting, milking and attending a little one-room school. There are oddities in his stories, things that may have been unique to his family's experience, but most of his stories have a rough equivalent in other families' experience. Examples: The practice of witching to find graves that even determined the sex of the person buried. A white rock that was special. A woman who practiced brauche and healed his ringworm.
   
   Books like this have proliferated--thank goodness--as many sit down to pass on the story of a way of life lived during days that have vanished. So you might ask, why would I want to read this book when I know (or have read about) others who have experienced a life similar to the one the author describes? Because Mueller projects an unusually powerful sense of family, of connection to his forebears and relatives, and to place. He listened carefully to oral histories passed by his family concerning the very earliest settlers of his family who came from the Russian steppe to the plains of North America. He also visited the site of the old home place and identified the old clay house and the other buildings where his pioneering forebears homesteaded. Mueller includes biographical sketches of family members and the local country doctor and describes a 1903 wedding dinner. He doesn't have "women's work" very well in focus, but he has proved to be a much better writer than he dreamt he could be when he started writing these essays, and he has made a fine contribution to the personal-reminiscence literature of the Germans from Russia.



2. First, many thanks to Tom. It was amazing to read the stories of my family in print. Finally, someone had the patience to sit down and put all of it down in one place. I cried as I read the stories retold by my great-aunts and uncles, my grandfather, and cousins. Not because they were sad, but because I was so happy to know that all of the stories of their love for each other and the family, hard work, struggles, and triumhps can never be forgotten now. I will always treasure this book just I have all of the people who contributed, and those that the stories were about.

1 comments about Fort Laramie in 1876: Chronicle of a Frontier Post at War.

1. Frontier historians have long been appreciative of the importance of Fort Laramie, at the confluence of the North Platte and Laramie rivers in present-day Wyoming, as a frontier outpost. Established in 1834 to support the fur trade, the fort had become by the 1850s a key post in the U. S. Army's logistical system and an important center for the orderly movement of settlers on the frontier. The troops at the post were involved in most of the major campaigns fought against the Indians of the northern Great Plains, until the post's inactivation in 1890.
   
   Paul L. Hedren, superintendent of the Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site here presents an impressive study of the role of Fort Laramie in the Sioux Indian War of 1876-1877, as the episode that broke the back of the Plains Indians. Using Fort Laramie as the backdrop from which to discuss this important episode in American history, Hedren analyzes in lively fashion the Big Horn, Yellowstone, and Powder River expeditions against the Sioux conducted by Gen. George Crook. There is also comment on Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn, the gold rush into the Black Hills, and the general discord of the Indians at the various agencies.
   
   But "Fort Laramie in 1876" is more than a recitation of the events of the Sioux Indian War. Many other historians have told that story over the years, and if Hedren had limited his book to the war I would have questioned the necessity of its publication. Instead, Hedren recognizes the army post for what it was, the most important installation on the northern plains and the critical site from which the army's campaign against the Sioux was both orchestrated and supplied. While the author's narrative ranges from Omaha, the headquarters ox the army's Department of the Platte, to the campaigns in Montana and the escape of some of the Sioux into Canada. Hedren's focus is always on Fort Laramie and its contributions to the war in terms of personnel, equipment, commanders, communications, and logistics.
   
   Hedren is the first to draw on the large body of material relating to the operation ox the post contained in the National Archives, particularly Record Group 393; the extensive collection of primary materials at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; and documents at the U.S. Military Academy Library at West Point. The result is impressive. Fort Laramie in 1876 captures the essence of the military outpost at war. It is an excellent companion volume and deserves a place on the shelf of all serious students of the American West and the Indian wars.

1 comments about Tracing Your Dakota Roots: A Guide to Genealogical Research in the Dakotas.

1. I was asked to review this book for a publishing contest. How lucky I was! It is the finest book I've seen this season--full of wonderful information, attractively designed, and very fun to look through. I think you'll enjoy this book, whether or not you do genealogy (I don't!), and no matter where you live. It's an entertaining historical read.

No comments about St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Leroy, North Dakota: Baptisms, marriages and burials, 1870-1932.

2 comments about The WPA Guide to South Dakota: The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s South Dakota.

1. I bought this as a birthday gift for my stepmom after seeing it in a literary catalog, Amazon had it cheaper of course. She is from South Dakota and I had an idea she might like the book, but she LOVED it. She said she clocked in 20 minutes late from her lunch break on the day I gave it to her, because she couldn't put it down. I later learned that she lived in the country and had lots of homes, wells, etc. that were WPA projects. A home run gift on this one, too bad they are not all this easy.



2. if y are looking for compact guide with lots of details buy this one-its a great buy

4 comments about Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past.

1. I couldn't put it down...read it over the weekend. This was a great book to get an intimate perspective of dakota native american life during the 1860's that was woven into the tracing of family roots. I learned a lot of details from that time and bonded with the family-I loved seeing pictures of several generations and following the impact of how events that happened long ago still impact us generations later.



2. Jumping into this work was like being wrapped in a time machine and taken back to places and circumstances hidden from history. It carries the feel of a story being shared by Lakota elders in the context of one families linage. So personnal, yet compelling as it takes you on a journey into the depths of Souix people at the apex of cultural modification programs for Native Americans. It's a view of history reserved for those who made the trip. A great read anyway you look at it!!



3. The road to discovering the details of one's family tree can be an emotional ride, especially when potentially painful memories are uncovered. Diane Wilson, the daughter of a Swedish American father and a mother with Native American roots, sets out to fill in the blanks of her maternal ancestry while her mother is still alive to confirm them. She wants to figure out her place within the wider view of the world, and more specifically, within the history and geography of her part of it: Minnesota and the Dakotas and their Native populations.
   
   Her narrative weaves back and forth: from her own genealogical research and interviews with her mother and aunts, to the fate of the Dakota Sioux who lived along the Minnesota River in 1862. By working both ends, she comes upon her own truths, somewhere in the middle. Here she provides insights that traditional history texts cannot. Wilson relates her story within the framework of her participation in the Dakota Commemorative March of 2002, which duplicated another "Trail of Tears" march of 150 miles from the Lower Sioux Agency in Redwood to Fort Snelling in Minneapolis. To walk where her own people have walked serves as a powerful culmination to her research.
   
   Anyone who has driven the interstates and back roads of the Northern Plains will recognize many of Wilson's routes, but probably not her specific destinations. With her genealogical mission in mind, she feels at times as though her car is filled with the ghosts of her ancestors, all demanding her attention and to tell their own stories. Surely hers took on the characteristics of a magical quest in search of self.
   
   "Spirit Car" is one woman's story and memoir, successfully connecting the Then to the Now in a very personal way. Readers should be grateful to be able to tag along.



4. Being married to a "mixed blood" (Ojibwe, Lakota and French) for 35 years has given me a bird's eye view into how my husband doesn't feel he fits in either world, white or Indian. I am very familiar with Native history and have visited Fort Ridgely and Fort Snelling and the area they were confined to after the long march, however Diane Wilson breathes life into these stories, giving me an even deeper understanding and perspective of the mixed blood's experience of previous generations. I didn't want to put this book down. I have passed it on to my husband and will recommend it to our four daughters. I highly recommend it.

1 comments about Honor the Grandmothers: Dakota and Lakota Women Tell Their Stories.

1. "Honoring the Grandmothers" is a slim book, barely bigger than your average sized pamphlet. Edited by Sarah Penman, a video and radio commentator living in Minnesota, the book is a collection of musings by four Dakota/Lakota grandmothers about traditional Indian knowledge and customs and how they relate to today's fast paced world. Penman captured the stories on tape over a period of years, working hard to overcome many obstacles to get the stories to us, the reader. There is little commentary on the stories; Penman allows them to speak for themselves. Two of the grandmothers have since passed away, but their words do continue to speak about maintaining dignity and culture in a world that likes to forget about the Indians and their way of life.

   Celane Not Help Him is the first speaker presented in the book. Celane did not have an easy life; she lived in poverty for most of her life, with little formal education. Her family lost their property when the United States Air Force confiscated it during WWII for use as an artillery range. Celane is the granddaughter of Iron Hail, a Lakota who survived the Battle of Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890. Celane provides an oral history of Wounded Knee that is both enlightening in historical terms and depressing in an emotional sense. It is hard to read Celane's account, as her speaking skills do not land easily on an English-speaking ear. It is best to read the account straight through, and then think about it for a time. When this is done, Celane comes across as clear as a star in the sky.

   The next set of stories comes from Stella Pretty Sounding Flute, a Wahpekute-Hunkpati Dakota. The Dakota people, like most Indians, had difficulties dealing with the burgeoning white population of America in the 19th century. After years of declining fortunes, an 1862 uprising in Minnesota brought down every bit of force the American government could muster on the Dakotas. The Dakota did not disappear, but scattered throughout Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota. Stella does not concern herself with these events as much as she does with the traditions she learned from her own grandparents. Her grandmother passed on skills and knowledge that no school can teach. Stella discusses the loss of the Black Hills, the traditions of pipe carrying, and spiritual beliefs.

   The third storyteller is Cecilia Hernandez Montgomery. Cecilia is part Mexican, part Oglala Sioux, and part firecracker. This is one tough dame. Cecilia spent time in a Catholic school (back when they REALLY used the ruler), studied music, and worked herself dizzy at a series of low paying jobs. Cecilia really came into her own when she started a career as an activist in South Dakota, working hard to improve the living conditions of poor people (all poor people, not just Indians). She sits on many boards, committees, and still pounds the pavement when problems arise. She did all of this into her seventies and beyond, not only exploding the myth of the lazy Indian but also causing irreparable harm to the conception that old people cannot do anything of value.

   The last narrative comes from Iola Columbus, a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota. Like many other Indians, Columbus spent time in an Indian boarding school, where military discipline combined with strict adherence to corporeal punishment attempted to erase the "Indian" from the Indians. Columbus's story is different from the others because she went on to become the first woman elected to tribal chair in the state of Minnesota. She later founded a grandmother's society, where women elders can gather to share traditional knowledge with new generations.

   "Honoring the Grandmothers" is really a book about the elderly and their marginalized role in American society. This is occurring not only in white society but in Indian society as well. A couple of the grandmothers lament the fact that their knowledge is not passed on, but disappearing as older members of Indian tribes pass away. In short, the same mentality (of the doddering old fool who is well past his/her prime) that leads whites to toss the elderly into nursing homes happens in Indian society as well. The elderly are rich sources of knowledge and culture in every society. We ignore them at our own peril.

5 comments about Dakota - A Spiritual Geography.

1. 'Dakota' was somewhat rambling but had several good nuggets of thought about how location affects our outlook. Broadens the mind to stretch now and then.



2. In Saudi Arabia there is a vast area, almost a fourth of the country, known as "The Empty Quarter," (Rub Al Khali), with perhaps a thousand permanent residents. It is the lack of good water that makes permanent inhabitation practically impossible. America has a similar region, although the conditions are not as dire. It is the area between the 100th and 105th meridian, roughly spanning a seventy-fifth of the world's circumference. Due to the lack of sufficient rainfall (less than 20 inches per year), John Wesley Powell (as well as others) said that the land should never be tilled. It was; one of the "fallouts" was the Dustbowl days of the `30's. Today, those who have not emigrated face a hard-scrabble existence, with the remaining farmers tapping deeper and deeper into the Ogallala aquifer. The area is called the High Plains, largely pancake flat, has strong winds, and unlike Saudi Arabia, particularly in the Dakotas, it can be bitter cold.
   
   Why would anyone voluntarily move there? Kathleen Norris did. She left a life in New York City, and embraced the austere bleakness that is northwest South Dakota. Many of her friends were flabbergasted at the move, and this book is largely an answer to why she did it. There are three principal subject matters: the environment, which encompasses the land and the weather; the kind of people who struggle to live there; and, as indicated by the subtitle, "a spiritual geography," dollops of philosophical musings. Norris has brief chapters entitled "Weather Report", with a given date, and generally the reports are not surprises, save, perhaps, the extremes that they can cover. Early in the book she assesses the dynamic tensions and contradictions in the people with a: "...between hospitality and insularity....between open hearts and closed minds." Later she says: "Small-town society often reminds me of the old joke about academic politics--they're so vicious because there so little at stake." And one of the sadder observations that she makes, and counterintuitive in some ways, since you would figure that it is the remote places that reading is more likely alternative: "Many teachers here also seem to give up any thought of lifelong learning... why so many adults in a town like Lemmon stop reading. More than once I've been surprised to discover that people who show no sign that they've ever read a book in their lives, are in fact former teachers, college graduates from the days when an education was said to mean something." She fleshes out these general observations with pithy vignettes involving the very real people of the town.
   
   Concerning how the inhabitants relate to the past, Norris says: "One popular form of writing on the Plains is the local history. These books reveal a great deal about the people who write them but do not often tell the true story of the region... As one old-timer told me, `people have been writing it the way they wished it had been instead of the way it was.'" But it this a "differential diagnosis" of the region's people, or a broader observation on how much of history is written?
   
   As to the philosophical musings, her erudition shines through, and her referential points bounce from Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th century to Carl Jung. Fitting for a place with `spiritual geography', she becomes involved with a nearby Benedictine monastery, and mentions the tales of Heloise and Abelard, when the "monk's face brightens, almost innocently, as he says, "It was the Benedictines who castrated him, you know.'" One might assume it was time to move on! Some of her spiritual geography might be too "new age" for some readers, but I was able to suspend some of my natural cynicism, and reflect on the impact of that "infinite horizon."
   
   So few people live in this area, and only a hand-full have Norris's knowledge and perspective, which is the real strength of this book. Particularly for those on the coasts, looking out their windows as they do indeed "fly over," this book would make their journey much more insightful.



3. This book came recommended to me during a spiritual retreat. I found it a thought provoking read in prayerfully reviewing my spiritual direction, as well as informative on small town, prairie living in a place dying, but unwilling to embrace outsiders. It also provided alot of information on the Benedictine monasteries. I took my time reading it and the book will be one I long remember.



4. This book is a patchwork of writings, many previously published, inviting us to visit the plains of North America. Many of the pieces effectively transport you there -- to small towns set apart under the big sky, remote enough to challenge our cultural concepts. Others are more personal, taking you on the author's "spiritual journey," and in these you meet Kathleen Norris the seeker. I'm not sure if it all came together as she intended. I learned things I didn't know about the sparsely settled plains states of our country. If you also want to explore some inner territory, you might like this book.



5. I greatly anticipated this books arrival. I too live on the lonesome, wide open, windy plains and hoped to find a kindred spirit in her description of the place I call home. Instead it seems that she is inclined to paint her fellow neighbors with a wide brush....(in her view it seems that way too many of them have a resentment of ANYONE who has a professional title, from teacher to minister and all in between, to the point that those individuals, according to her, often downplay their level of knowledge or education) and though I am a religious person myself, I grew VERY tired of her continual comparisons of her experiences at her local monastary with everything in life. If you are a fan of reading about the Benedictine monks and their life, with small samplings of landscape descriptions and generalizations of all the small minded folks in her town, you might like this one. But, for me, it is one of the few books that I will give up on this year.

No comments about To Be an Indian: An Oral History (Borealis).