To settle and remain in the American Outback, the unforgiving land of the Oklahoma Panhandle, was an achievement. Prosperity and risk were present in equal measure. Comprising land that Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico did not want, and that Texas, after entering the Union as a slave state, could not have, the Oklahoma Panhandle was dubbed No Man s Land. This geographical anomaly, 165 miles long and only 35 miles wide, belonged to no one and, before statehood, served as a haven for desperadoes and villains. Only with the creation of the Oklahoma Territory in 1890 was the area finally claimed...

"There's no denying Hartman's] abilities as a photographer. Shape, color, and light, he has an impeccable eye for composition, for juxtaposing line against line, drawing the viewer's eye into his subject. . . . In North Dakota, he likes a flood-drenched plain in orange twilight, one stretch of barbed wire fence in a strong horizontal, another triangulating stretch (just the fence posts visible above the water) disappearing into the distance. In South Dakota, he gives us a flat plain with alternating gold, green, and brown strips of field, a dark storm building overhead. . . . Accompanying...

In August of 1897, in the small village of Henna, Syria, eighteen miles from Damascus, Mohammed (Ed) Aryain was born. As far back as he could remember, Ed dreamed of moving to the United States. In the early twentieth century Syria still suffered from high taxation and control under the Ottoman Turks. Ed saw Syrians who had been to America returning home with gold watches and money to purchase land, and he vowed to do the same.Although his parents did not want him to go, eventually they relented and watched fifteen-year-old Ed begin a 120-mile walk to Beirut to board a steamship. He tells of...

Reinhardt furnishes revealing portraits of Gerald One Feather, Dick Wilson, Russell Means; he offers a telling indictment of Pine Ridge s economy. He is one of the few historians who understands the distinction D Arcy McNickle made decades ago between loss and defeat. He and the late Vine Deloria, Jr. would have welcomed this volume because of its thorough research and, above all, its unflinching honesty. Writing in 1970 Deloria called for historians to bring historical consciousness to the whole Indian story. Ruling Pine Ridge achieves that goal. It will be required reading for all who care...

On a horrific night in October 1975, Erwin Simants brutally murdered six members of the Henry Kellie family in tiny Sutherland, Nebraska. Massive media attention to the grisly story soon spawned a historic collision between two of the most cherished American constitutional protections - the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press and the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a criminal defendants right to a fair trial before an impartial jury. "Rights in the Balance" is the story of the complex legal battles set in motion that tragic night on the western Nebraska plains. In juxtaposition to the...

The long-intertwined communities of the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation and the bordering towns in Sheridan County, Nebraska, mark their histories in sensational incidents and quiet human connections, many recorded in detail here for the first time. After covering racial unrest in the remote northwest corner of his home state of Nebraska in 1999, journalist Stew Magnuson returned four years later to consider the larger questions of its peoples, their paths, and the forces that separate them. Examining Raymond Yellow Thunder s death at the hands of four white men in 1972, Magnuson looks...

A century ago, when Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona outlawed steer roping contests, there was one place a southwestern roper could go to hone his skills: Cowboy Park, the arena established in 1907 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. During the formative years of rodeo that preceded the first Calgary Stampede in 1912, Cowboy Park promoted the sport of steer roping and provided a ready training ground for up-and-coming champions. From its inception until growing political turmoil in Mexico brought the enterprise to a halt, Cowboy Park kept the sport alive...

Incorporating previously overlooked materials, including tribal council records, oral histories, and reservation newspapers, Ruling Pine Ridge explores the political history of South Dakota s Oglala Lakota reservation during the mid-twentieth century. Akim D. Reinhardt examines the reservation s transition from the direct colonialism of the pre-1934 era to the indirect colonial policies of the controversial Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) and the advent of the tribal council governing system still in place today on Pine Ridge and on many other reservations. Reinhardt demonstrates how...

Now it is time for you to read the letters of Mari Sandoz. If it has been a clear summer day and it is near sundown, take this book and a cool drink outside and soak in the wisdom of a writer with a cause. John R. Wunder, from the forewordAuthor Mari Sandoz was as passionate about Plains peoples as she was about language and literary acclaim. That the mastery of Crazy Horse s biographer spilled into her zealous advocacy for Native Americans is scarcely surprising. An avid letter writer, Sandoz kept carbons of everything. Fortunately these came into the Sandoz Collection at the University of...

In twenty-five years of syndicated columns in small-town Texas newspapers between 1930 and 1960, Nellie Witt Spikes described her life on the High Plains, harking back to earlier times and reminiscing about pioneer settlement, farm and small-town culture, women s work, and the natural history of the flatlands and canyons. Spikes s life spanned the arrival of Euro-American settlers, the transition from ranching to farming, the drought and dust storms of the 1930s, and the irrigation revolution of the 1940s. Engaging and eloquent, her As a Farm Woman Thinks columns today conjure up a vivid...