When Scandinavian immigrants and Dakota Indians lived side by side on a turn-of-the-century reservation, each struggled independently to preserve their language and culture. Despite this shared struggle, European settlers expanded their land ownership throughout the period while Native Americans were marginalized on the reservations intended for them. Karen Hansen captures this moment through distinctive, uniquely American voices.

In 1904, the first Scandinavian settlers moved onto the Spirit Lake Dakota Indian Reservation. These land-hungry immigrants struggled against severe poverty, often becoming the sharecropping tenants of Dakota landowners. Yet the homesteaders' impoverishment did not impede their quest to acquire Indian land, and by 1929 Scandinavians owned more reservation acreage than their Dakota neighbors. Norwegian homesteader Helena Haugen Kanten put it plainly: "We stole the land from the Indians." With this largely unknown story at its center, Encounter on the Great Plains brings together two dominant processes in American history: the unceasing migration of newcomers to North America, and the protracted dispossession of indigenous peoples who inhabited the continent. Drawing on fifteen years of archival research and 130 oral histories, Karen V. Hansen explores the epic issues of co-existence between settlers and Indians and the effect of racial hierarchies, both legal and cultural, on marginalized peoples. Hansen offers a wealth of intimate detail about daily lives and community events, showing how both Dakotas and Scandinavians resisted assimilation and used their rights as new citizens to combat attacks on their cultures. In this flowing narrative, women emerge as resourceful agents of their own economic interests. Dakota women gained autonomy in the use of their allotments, while Scandinavian women staked and "proved up" their own claims. Hansen chronicles the intertwined stories of Dakotas and immigrants-women and men, farmers, domestic servants, and day laborers. Their shared struggles reveal efforts to maintain a language, sustain a culture, and navigate their complex ties to more than one nation. The history of the American West cannot be told without these voices: their long connections, intermittent conflicts, and profound influence over one another defy easy categorization and provide a new perspective on the processes of immigration and land taking.

National Bestseller Most travelers only fly over the Great Plains--but Ian Frazier, ever the intrepid and wide-eyed wanderer, is not your average traveler. A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation. With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

James R. Mead, explorer, naturalist, and plainsman, came to Kansas Territory in 1859. He hunted buffalo, built trading posts in Towanda, on the Ninnescah River near Clearwater, and came to Wichita in 1870. He was responsible for bringing the cattle drives to Wichita, and was a good friend of Jesse Chisholm, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill Mathewson, and Chief Satanta. Mead was a state senator and president of the Kansas State Historical Society. His writings encompass the territorial days through the march of civilization, and give a firsthand account of buffalo, Native Americans, and the honor of the early settlers.

Deftly retracing a pivotal chapter in one of America's most dramatic stories, Elliott West chronicles the struggles, triumphs and defeats of both Indians and whites as they pursued their clashing dreams of greatness in the heart of the continent.

A beautifully rendered reference guide to the Great Plains portion of the famous expedition through the American West highlights the explorer's remarkable encounters with previously undocumented flora and fauna as they moved through the Plains region. Original. (Biology & Natural History)

In May 1995, with nothing but a backpack and a vague sense of disquiet, Patrick Dobson left his home and a steady if deadening job in Kansas City, Missouri. Over the next two and a half months he made his way to Helena, Montana, letting chance encounters guide him to a deeper sense of who he was and where he was going. His chronicle of this journey charts his experiences with the seldom-seen people of the small towns, the far-flung outposts, and the Great Plains that make up "our America."