Some New Titles in the Heritage Room, January, 2011

What follows is a sampling of some of the new and notable titles acquired by the Heritage Room in the last six months.

Mari Sandoz "I Do Not Apologize for the Length of This Letter" The Mari Sandoz Letters on Native American Rights, 1940-1965, Introduced and edited by Kimberli A. Lee, with a foreword by John R. Wunder. (Plains Histories) Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2009.

Kimberli Lee, who compiled this collection and wrote chapters introducing the volume and the four carefully chosen groupings of letters within it, became acquainted with the letters when she was a doctoral student as the University of Nebraska. Lee created the online finding aid for the National Endowment for the Humanities supported project that preserved some 20,000 pages of Sandoz letters, and some 32,000 of Sandoz's research cards on microfilm.

The selection that Lee has made focuses on four themes: Sandoz's concern with historical accuracy in the portrayal of Native Americans; her indictments of federal Indian policy; her criticism of the negative and simplistic stereotyping of American Indians in advertising, film, and fiction; and her support for Native writers and artists.

Sandoz was driven, to the point of obsession, by her concern for historical accuracy, with getting the details right. She hated it when she found the history that mattered to her most obscured by confusion, inaccuracy, and carelessness. Thus her raging contempt for the films that borrowed freely (plagiarized, she thought) from her books on Crazy Horse and on the Cheyenne, only to present, yet again, new and sensational versions of that stereotyped, cliché-ridden false history she worked so hard to correct. She was equally clear-headed about the economic and political forces that were driving contemporary Indian Policy. She was also remarkably prescient in understanding what historical materials and themes were going to grow in significance as the years passed. At times she came close, long before it became popular, to writing a sort of environmental history. On the subject matter in question here, Lee quotes Vine DeLoria, Jr. on her insights into Native history: "Sandoz had an amazing ability to develop themes and issues that plagued Indians during her time and that continue to disrupt us today."

While these attributes are perhaps not in themselves exactly the source of Sandoz's literary greatness, they are still very much part of what made her a great writer. This is an important book because it introduces a vast collection of material that reflects Sandoz's way of thinking about these matters. Perhaps it's worth noting, too, that well considered collections of this sort have been an important part of the intellectual landscape, but that may not be true any longer. As Lee notes in closing, such a collection of Sandoz's letters "may never again be produced on paper, given technological advances in digital and electronic communication." Will anyone take the trouble to do this kind of work, if the product is to be as ephemeral as a blog posting?

Several related works have come in over the last several months, including:

Wynne L. Summers, Women Elder's Life Stories of the Omaha Tribe. Macy, Nebraska 2004-2005, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009

Hugh J. Reilly, The Frontier Newspapers and the Coverage of the Plains Indian Wars (Native America: Yesterday and Today), Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010.

Linda M. Waggoner, Fire Light: The Life of Angel De Cora, Winnebago Artist, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. A fascinating biography of one of the first Indian artists to make it in the mainstream of American art.

We are now a bit behind in noticing new materials and hope to catch up in later postings.

One Book-One Lincoln Display at Bennett Martin Library

A new display on the second floor of Bennett Martin Public Library in downtown Lincoln celebrates the announcement that Joe Starita’s book, I am a Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice will be this year’s One Book/One Lincoln selection. Other finalists were worthy, but Starita’s book offers a riveting story with deep roots in local and regional history.

Joe Starita was born in Lincoln and studied English and Journalism at the University of Nebraska. He went on to become an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald and that newspaper’s New York City Bureau Chief. He is a former City Editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. He has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for reporting at the Miami Herald, and his book, The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge (1995) won him critical acclaim, local and regional awards, and a second Pulitzer Prize nomination. Starita teaches in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Starita’s books are a distinguished contribution to a strong Nebraska literary tradition. Some of the earliest serious attempts to record and understand Native American experiences and to put the Plains Indians back into American history as real people were made by Nebraska writers. Our display represents a little more than a century of Nebraskans writing about the Plains Indians.

In the best of these works, writers struggled to present the true voices of Native Americans and record their side of history in stories that seemed about to be lost to old age and death, or overlooked in a strong tendency to convert American history into a dull monument to virtue and Manifest Destiny. Real history, interesting history, is meaningful conflict, complex people who deserve to be understood on their own terms, mixed motives and light and shadow. While recognizing that the simple moralization of history is a trap that leaves us ignorant, from time to time, Nebraska writers have gently suggested that much is to be learned from the struggles of native people that sheds light on some of America’s more persistent problems at home and abroad.

The display includes work by Starita, Eli S. Ricker, Mari Sandoz, John Neihardt, Melvin Gilmore, Amos Bad Heart Bull (introduction by Mari Sandoz), George Hyde, Donald Danker, Thomas Henry Tibbles, Hartley Burr Alexander, Alan Boye, John Wunder, and Stew Magnuson, among others.

New Titles in the Heritage Room--February 2010

New acquisitions over the last few months include these titles among others:

Lisa Norman, Haythorn Land & Cattle Co., A Horseman's Heritage. A pictorial essay by Lisa Norman. (introduction by Red Steagall). Kansas City: Trabon Printing, 2007. This coffee table book explores ranch history and work life through the seasons on the famed Sandhills ranch founded by Harry Haythornthwaite and his wife Emma in 1884.

The Haythorn ranch raises Angus, Hereford, and Longhorn Cattle and is especially famed for the quality of its foundation-bred Quarter Horses. The Haythorn ranch did not mechanize to the extent that others did, finding it more economical to continue to raise and use Belgian/Percheron work horses to stock hay in the summer and to feed cattle in winter. Author-photographer Lisa Norman has lived and worked on the Haythorn ranch since 1995. She does a wonderful job of capturing the working landscape and people of the ranch. Anyone interested in the Nebraska Sandhills, in the survival of traditional ways of life, or in horses, might enjoy this book.

Heritage Room uncatalogued holdings include Nebraska photographer Charles Guildner's album of photographs, Lives of Tradition, Vol. 2, Scenes. (9 in a limited edition of 20), also with some scenes from the Haythorn ranch.

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John Janovy, Jr. Pieces of the Plains: Memories and Predictions from the Heart of America. Lincoln: J&L Lee Co., 2009. John Janovy, Jr. is one of Nebraska's human treasures, a distinguished scientist who has also written for broader audiences. Seeking to show us what "there is to learn from nature rather than about nature," Janovy is the author (and illustrator) of some of the most admired books and essays in American natural history, among them, Keith County Journal, Return to Keith County, and Dunwoody Pond: Reflections on the High Plains Wetlands and the Cultivation of Naturalists. He has often written about how young people learn, and about the philosophical and social consequences of our contested and evolving understanding of nature and our place in it. This is a very personal book about the issues Janovy cares most about.

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The Loren Eiseley Reader, published by the Loren Eiseley Society, 2009, with an introduction by Ray Bradbury is intended to remind us of the work of the anthropologist, essayist, and poet, and to introduce that work to a new generation. Eiseley, who grew up in Lincoln and attended the University of Nebraska, was a pioneer in asking us to reconsider our place in the natural world and think about the limits of our scientific and technical mastery. Eiseley was a brilliant essayist, with a capacity to pull his readers into his own inward experience of nature, his "night country" and then carry them along along on his journey into a new scientific and humanistic understanding of the waking world. The Reader is a collection of short pieces and excerpts from Eiseley's best known works.

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Mari Sandoz, Capital City, a new edition with an introduction by Nebraska born writer Terese Svoboda. (Lincoln: Bison Books, 2007). This new (to our collection) paperback edition has a wonderful period cover photograph that could remind us, as Ms. Svoboda does, that when Sandoz was writing this in Lincoln in the late 1930s, some Lincoln families were finding their food at the municipal dump. Capital City contains some of Sandoz's most angry writing.

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Kwakiutl L. Dreher, Dancing on the White Page: Black Women Entertainers Writing Autobiography (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), explores the popular autobiographies of well known Black women entertainers, including Diahann Carroll, Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Whoopi Goldberg, and Mary Wilson. The author was our February "Lunch at the Library" speaker.

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George E. Hyde, Rangers and Regulars (Columbus, Ohio: Long's College Books, 1933, 1952). New to our collection, this book surveys Spanish, Mexican and American conflicts with the mounted Southern Plains Indians, especially the Comanches. Omaha resident Hyde was a prodigious researcher with a deep interest in Native American history and contacts in many tribes. Legally blind, he was sought out by George Bird Grinnell and assisted Grinnell in researching books on the Cheyenne and the Pawnee. He wrote several early tribal histories and was an early explorer in the field now known as ethnobotany. Having obtained and cultivated many of the old varieties of Indian corn, he was co-author with George F. Will of Corn Among the Indians of the Upper Missouri, published in 1917.

Joe Starita will present the Ames Reading on Sunday April 19, 2009

Joe Starita was born in Lincoln and studied English and Journalism at the University of Nebraska. He went on to become an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald and the Herald's New York City Bureau Chief. He is also a former City Editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. He has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his reporting at the Miami Herald, and his earlier book, The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge (1995) won him critical acclaim, local and regional awards, and another Pulitzer Prize nomination. His new book, I am a Man: Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice published just this year, is gathering the same kind of attention and critical interest as his earlier work. We look forward to hearing from him at 2 P.M. Sunday, April 19 in the Heritage Room on the third floor of Bennett Martin library.