Plains Folk

In 1874 Walter A. Burleigh, a notorious grafter, was seeking to return to Congress as the delegate for Dakota Territory, which the Bismarck Tribune insisted would be a “calamity.” Lest anyone over east in the Red River Valley take his side, the Trib reminded people how Burleigh had pronounced their part of the territory “only fit for the production of mosquitoes and catfish.”

Might as well admit it, I’m a sucker for the Glorious 4th. My affinity for the national holiday probably goes back to family gatherings on the farm where food miraculously materialized around a bonfire and nobody ever successfully totaled up how many cousins there were sitting on the hayracks and throwing fireworks.

Cather, and her persona Jim Burden in My Antonia, were perhaps a bit too mystic about ground cherries, but it sort of makes sense. Cather in her Nebraska novels is a deeply Romantic author, with a certain twist: she embraces sensual experiences, often as triggers to mystic insights. So Jim lies down in the garden, picks and munches a few ground cherries, and proceeds to become one with nature.

I have the most lovely row of ground cherries growing in my prairie garden this summer. Ground cherries are a niche crop, much confused, even by nurseries. This year I observed flats of ground cherries in one greenhouse that bore, simultaneously, the labels “Ground Cherry,” “Tomatillo,” and “Tomato.” Lots of confusion there, although all three are members of the nightshade family.

When New England-born Ninette Maine Lowater moved to North Dakota in 1916, her journey was not joyous. As a teenager she had moved with her family from Connecticut to Wisconsin in 1859. After the Civil War she had married a returning soldier, Harrison Lowater. With him she raised three children and lived in comfortable, although not luxurious, circumstances. Mrs. Lowater became a poet of some note, publishing her work in both local and the national press.

Is there still musical performance in the legislature since Representative Carolyn Nelson retired? Is there a legislative choir? If not, then Senator Erbele, how about it? Somebody needs to make a place for harmony.

The legislature has gone home, prompting sighs of relief across the state, not least among the legislators themselves. Yes, I have been among those taking shots at them during the recent session, or rather, I would make the distinction, taking shots at some of their actions.

Oh how we boys — folkies of the 1970s — loved to sing the ballad of Jesse James.

In a frame shanty on a homestead claim in Spink County, Dakota Territory, a Norwegian mother imprisoned by a blizzard gave vent to her hopelessness. “We are as if we were living on an island in the middle of an ocean,” she lamented, “with nobody to care if we blow away or if we freeze to death. There is not a person with whom we can talk and who understands our language.

Sometimes when you travel you plan your itinerary carefully, but you get lost anyway, and then it turns out what you stumbled into while lost is better than what you had planned. The same goes for doing archival research in prairie history.