Plains Folk

Sean Sherman calls himself the Sioux Chef. That’s in the title of his book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen . S-i-o-u-x Sioux, as in Lakota, not sous chef, as in the hands-on guy who runs a kitchen operation and reports to the executive chef. So if you have a distaste for puns, you can stop listening now, while I talk about The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen , published by University of Minnesota Press.

Great Plains Geology , by R. F. Diffendal Jr., is a recent volume in the Discover the Great Plains Series of handbooks organized out of the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska, and published by University of Nebraska Press. The author is professor emeritus of geology, UNL, and has a strong record of writing for academic and popular audiences.

On a still summer evening, my retriever has her nose pressed against the screen door. Just outside, on the patio, a dehydrator is desiccating a load of chamomile blossoms. The aroma must be intoxicating to a sensitive nose. Come the deep winter, I will make a Coleman press thermos of tea from the dried blossoms and bring it to the desk where I am writing now, using the soothing tea to settle me in for an evening’s work. And the History Dog will follow me there, too, also enjoying the aroma.

If you’re like me, you’ve already filled up your calendar with events and expeditions for the summer. Make room for one more: 2pm Sunday afternoon, June 9, Rebecca Bender will booktalk her recent work, Still , at the Wild Rose Bar & Cafe, Ashley. Why not make it a day in McIntosh County, on the eastern front of German-Russian Country? There will be time before or after the booktalk to make pilgrimage to the Ashley Jewish Homesteaders Cemetery, just north of town, where you can connect with

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about northern pike. Other people in spring are thinking about walleye. Walleye, I like to say, is fish for people who don’t like fish. And they are wimpy fish, too, so there. With ice breakup our state fish in on the prowl, hungry, and so am I. Get yourself in the right place, and you can catch pike on almost anything you tie on. Some people use hotdogs for bait. My usual recourse is to that classic offering known as the Daredevil, a traditional red-and-white

Here are a couple of things that seem far apart, but in my mind, there is a connection. We are recently returned from a research expedition to the high dry interior of New Zealand, where we spent time with people who have established a world-class wine industry in former sheep paddocks. Marketing is crucial to them, marketing not only their vintage but also the land in which it is made.

The Missouri River never had a Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, to pilot its historic steamboats into the literary canon. Steamboating on the Great Plains in general has been shortchanged by regional historians, beginning with the great one, Walter Prescott Webb, in 1931. This was because Webb was from Texas, and steamboats were not significant drivers of white settlement on the southern plains.

The name Bertha Rachael Palmer has an ambiguous resonance in our history on the northern plains. I have written in admiration of her 1928 book, Beauty Spots in North Dakota , indeed, have offered metaphorically to carry her bags for a tour of the Flickertail State. On the other hand, Bertha Rachael Palmer represents some ideas and habits that make many of us today uncomfortable.

This is not an attempt to rekindle an old controversy, but in my opinion, our state’s flagship university missed an opportunity when a few years ago it selected a new nickname for its sports teams. It seems to me the selection process was crippled by lingering commitment to the previous, objectionable nickname. The result was “Fighting Hawks,” which is getting some traction, but is, well, uninspired.

About the time you hear this essay, Suzzanne and I will be jetting to New Zealand once again. We have scheduled our spring break in the Hocken Library, at the University of Otago, the southernmost university in the world. From there we will range into the field, the grassy basins of Central Otago, for fieldwork in regional history. This itinerary puts into practice the advice I give my History students at NDSU: first, butts in the archives; and then, boots on the ground. Go get the history where