Harry thompson voices of the Northern Plains refers to the many different ways that life on this part of the country has been recorded. Either through letters or diaries or journals or photographs or objects as well. By the many, many different varieties of cultures that have lived here. What we wanted to accomplish and emphasized in the material you see in this exhibit is that more information can be gathered by just using the records we have on the second floor, our research core. The archives themselves, and also the research library. 40,000 volumes on the american west. Human habitation of the plains would date from well before the current era. Most anthropologists date north American Indians as far back as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Plains culture. What you will see in this exhibit is much more recent, from about 1700. It is still precontact. Date contact periods in this part of the country from the french expedition along the Missouri River, the Andre Brothers and their father. About 1743. The materials that you see here with date from before that period of time. One object i would point to in particular would be this buffalo effigy in this red tablet. This is catlanite. There is a strong vein of soft stone of this red variety up and down the Northern Plains between minnesota and the dakotas. Catlinite was used for a number of objects. This board has an insight buffalo figure. It was also used for cutting of tobacco and the use of the pipe and prayer before a hunt on the plains. In addition to the place we have in addition to the plate we have here, which we will see a much larger representation of said you can see the buffalo, here also is the pipe bowl carved from the same red stone quarry along the border between south dakota and minnesota. Then the stem that was also used with the beadwork that was emblematic of the plains indians. The winter count would have been a form of the history book for the lakota people, in the sense that the tribal elders would have decided among themselves to what event in the Previous Year was most important to them. Then on the buffalo hide like we have here, this reproduction, and a glyph or a symbol representation of a particular event would appear. We know that from this particular account, the red horse owners winter count, which is unique because there is a legend that goes along with the glyph. We know that this would have been a meteor shower in the year that that represents. We know from the documentation done by anthropologists on this the year of that particular event. Or we would know for example certainly some of those earlier years dating back to maybe the coming of the european americans, starting to come in here and perhaps measles. And then certainly in outbreak of measles which devastated tribal populations, wiping out entire villages. Contact with european americans coming up the Missouri River, or down from canada. The hunters of the beaver would have been carrying measles and other diseases that would have been no way that plains indians would have had a way to be inoculated against those. The allotment of the land skipping down here to the dividing of the land which wouldve been a very foreign concept to plains indians. Plains indians were certainly very fierce in their protection of their land from other tribal people, but the dividing of the land and the resettlement under reservations would have been a very foreign concept to them. You can see the measles and other infections coming in. Battles, various attacks are represented in this red horse owners winter count. We have moved from the area were the earlier contact between the dakota and lakota people and the european americans to more of an emphasis on europeanamerican experience itself. Again we are tracing voices and looking for documents that tell us in the words of the people themselves, or in their own objects, what that experience was like. One of the interesting questions and material that actually relates to this wouldve been relates to this is how would people get into this country, which would have been before trains. They would have come up the Missouri River, as lewis and clark did in their own boat. The steamboat came along in the 1840s for sure. This is a captains wheel from an early steamboat on the Missouri River. We have in our collections a set of letters by a woman whose name is lily hayes. This particular letter from 1874 is one of my favorites. She writes, i waited with trunks packed for three weeks. At last the vote came in sight and we started on our perilous journey up the river. This Missouri River is unlike any river you could dream of. It is very broad and in some places shallow. The channel owing to the sand and winds continually shifting. It is never two days in the same place. Here is an eyewitness account of her first view of the Missouri River that she is now going to go up to the cheyenne reservation and become a missionary teacher. There were earlier writers of the plains, basing their work on Historical Research and lived experience themselves. In a way, they became the pioneers for the writers they came after them. In particular, a writer like Herbert Krause that we have here. Krause grew up of a german extraction in western minnesota near fergus falls, on a farm. He and his family were farmers. Krause wanted the life of a writer. He was in the iowas writer school. He got a call from the president of a college to come and establish a writing school in sioux falls, south dakota. What he ultimately wound up establishing is the center for western studies. We do have a number of connections with the writers from this particular area of the country. Krause became the writer in residence, can we have a writer in residence to this day, patrick hicks. Krause was known for the descriptive nature of his writing. Novels from 1939 to 1956 or so are the the wind without rain the thresher, a 1946 novel, and the oxcart trail. The oxcart trail kind of ended krauses novel career and that he went to essays. One of the authors that looked up to him was frederick manfred. This representation that we have right here of frederick manfreds briefcase and typewriter, a page from one of his manuscripts, and the very desk he wrote at are located here. These are photographs of fred manfred. Here he is in his buckskin boots. I will mention the word buckskin in a particular way. Behind us, in front of the desk are those actual buckskins. He is most famous for the novel lord grizzly, about a mountain man, a historical character in the 1820s. He traveled up the river with a military expedition. There he had the unfortunate experience of an encounter with a grizzly bear. The grizzly bears were famously or notoriously present in the plains. In his novel that was published in 1954, manfred describes some of hugh glass experience. He ate and drank and slept all through the day and night. He slept on the sandbar, one arm late protectively over the halfeaten bull calf. When the wolfs and vultures threatened, the fought them off. Sometimes hunger woke him. Sometimes snarling wolves woke him. A full belly always put him to sleep. In talking to students or when we talk about what is it that is distinctive about the great plains where we live, i often like to point out the fact it is the immediacy of history. For these writers as well, and the case of frederick manfred, he farmed for a number of years along with his father. It would have been his grandfather who would have been the first generation that would have moved into this part of the country. In the case of krause, the same would have applied. His grandfather would have been from germany and moved here. One of the early immigrants to this part of the country. We are talking a generation or two generations before. In order to understand themselves and to have a perspective on what their role might have been in this vast area called the plains, they only needed to go back one or two generations. What is unique about this part of the country, i was saving it i would say it is that immediacy. Unlike some of the other areas of the country that go back 200, 300, 400 years, certainly the contact period for the dakotas is much more recent. Announcer our cities tour staff recently traveled to sioux falls, south dakota, to learn about its rich history. Learn more about sioux falls and other stops on our tour at cspan. Org citiestour. You are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Announcer next, historian James Holland talks about american and British Artillery production between 1941 and 1943, after German Forces invaded soviet territory. He is the author the author of several