North Dakota Books

Author: Brown, Dee Alexander.
Title: Killdeer Mountain : a novel / Dee Brown.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, c1983.
Edition Date: 1983
Language: English
Physical Details: 279 p. ; 22 cm.
Subjects: Frontier and pioneer life--Dakota Territory--Fiction.
Indians of North America--Wars--Fiction.
Dakota Indians--Fiction.
United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Fiction.
Genre or Form: Historical fiction.

This has a short overview of the history of the tribe. It really shines in the illustrations, with many photographs.

This is a wonderful book.The War is reviewed by the warriors, wise men and tribe members.To see it through their eyes plus the scholarship of the author is really amazing. Someone once said that history is always written by the victors, but the honesty and balance of this book belies that.
Jerome A. Greene is a splendid writer and historian and has added an excellent volume to the canon of books already published on the subject. Thanks Amazon for making my aware of its existence.

Elaine Lindgren has done an excellent job researching a little known subject. She gives not only a very fine introduction to the subject of homesteading, she provides a wonderful written documentary of the phenomenon of single women who homesteaded in North Dakota. This book is not only wonderfully written (it is actually a page turner), it also leaves the reader enthralled with a whole area of American history which had previously gone undocumented. I truly enjoyed this book and have given copies to friends who tell me they found it just as interesting

favorite scene with kate-
dinner with chase set up by those sneaky kids.

favorite scene with chase-
meeting with kate in a dark, smoky restaurant.

favorite scene with kate and chase together-
board meeting

Reviewed by Lynn Downs for Reader Views (4/06)

"Live Well" is a collection of insightful letters written by Sigrid Lillehaugen to inform relatives in Norway of the day to day living conditions and health of her family. Through these letters, which are sent mostly to her father and stepmother, Sigrid shows herself to be a determined, strong woman who lets no adversity get her down.

Sigrid writes about things as mundane as the price of grain at market and the daily running of her farm to the academic and religious education of her children. The mother of 12, Sigrid dotes on her children and their abilities. Even when she laments to her father in a letter about how one of her sons is physically handicapped and will never leave her care, she adds that the child is "intelligent and bright". She also writes frequently of church and community happenings that she feels may interest her father and family back home. At the end of each letter, Sigrid bids her family to "Live Well", for as Sigrid says " If a person is satisfied, it doesn't tae much to live well."

"Live Well" gives an accurate and enjoyable account of early pioneer life in the Dakota's. I found the book to be a wonderful example of early settler's perseverance during times of real despair. And the never ending love of Sigrid for her family, both near and far, shines through in each letter.

Book review by Edna Boardman, Bismarck, North Dakota

This is a companion to Vossler¹s earlier book Not Until the Combine is
Paid and Other Jokes: From the Oral Traditions of Germans from Russia in the Dakotas. As was the case with his first title, Vossler endeavors to translate the old culture, received from German Russian immigrants, for their descendants today.

In Not Until the Combine is Paid, Vossler collected humorous narrative stories. For his second, he says in the book¹s introduction, he pulled together "much folkloric material" he had omitted from the first. He says, "One good reason for this collection is to gather some of the shorter kinds of humor, the chants and the ditties, the greetings and the retorts, along with brief commentary--to illustrate the distinct, if at times enigmatic, humor which is, or was, once a part of Germans from Russia culture and social discourse. Another reason for this collection is to bring together in printed form various anecdotes and folklore which have been circulating in private for many years...." Vossler collected his material formally and informally among the Germans from Russia both in the Dakotas and in the Ukraine.

The book reveals humor used to cope with a life that was close to earthy realities. Some of the humor is philosophical, "A miserable life is always better than a beautiful death." Some grew out of the experiences of communist Ukraine. Villager 1: "Did you hear that Jacob S. died?" Villager 2: "No, I didn¹t even know he¹d been arrested." There are tinges of cruelty. A child who says he is hungry is told, "Are you hungry? Then crawl into a cucumber." Some comes from differences between ethnic and religious groups, as when a Lutheran Church described attendance at a wedding as constituting "106 souls and one German." Many grew out of plays on language or confusions caused by learning to function in two languages. When one man was not invited to a birthday party, another said of him, "They just didn¹t load him in." Vossler has to explain why this is funny, as he does quite frequently. He also often includes the way punch lines were spoken in Black Sea German Russian dialect, then translates them. This may be somewhat awkward, but then the reader must remember that the humor is more about cultural preservation than entertainment.

An issue for Vossler, as it is with many who read the book, is what to do about the many jokes that are scatological. Example: A sign in a small cafe in German-Russian country had a sign that said, "When the Butt Trumpets, The Heart is Healthy." Vossler explains his reasons for including them in his introduction. "...some of what is included here, such as the many jokes with their focus on dung, as well as anecdotes about differences between various Germans from Russia religious groups, may strike readers as insensitive, or, even untoward. What I would emphasize is that this material--however "grob" or crude--is as much a part of this ethnic group¹s traditions as its food-ways, or the plaintive "sorrow songs" of its non-liturgical religious music. To ignore such distinctive material because it may offend some will only contribute to further misunderstanding of an ethnic group already mis-characterized, even by some of its descendants, as having no humor, art, or literature."

As in the first title, readers looking for something that fits meaningfully into their current cultural milieu will be mostly disappointed. Most of the jokes/sayings/retorts come from another time and place, the Ukraine and the German-Russian farms and small towns of a generation or two or three ago. Yet, many are still remembered by persons living today (this reviewer included), which attests to their authenticity. Dwellers in small
towns with thinning populations, whose children live not on the next farm but in distant cities, will recall them with a certain nostalgia.

Love Medicine was Louise Erdrich's debut novel and won a National Book Critics Circle Award when it was published in 1984. A short story cycle narrated by a variety of different characters, Love Medicine chronicles the intertwined histories of Chippewa and mixed-blood families in North Dakota spanning more than fifty years and laying bare the ordeals and joys of twentieth-century Native American life. Erdrich successfully and poignantly evoked the continued relevance of homeland, humor, and storytelling with the issues of indigenous survival in the modern era. Highly recommended reading for students of contemporary Native American experience in general, and the writings of Louise Erdrich in particular, Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine: A Casebook is a scholarly compendium of literary criticism and analytical essays organized around the subjects of "Contexts: History, Culture, and Storytelling"; "Mixed Identities and Multiple Narratives"; Individual and Cultural Survival: Humor and Homecoming"; and Reading Self/Reading Others".

I am a Cree pipe carrier and I am so grateful for the gentle flowing words of prayer. Truly a humble man has written such a book of honoring the grandfathers as well as the words of the people whom he met. Kind and wonderous in its bringing together of Aboriginal and Christian beliefs as our path to one creator are meant to be.

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I found this book being both an honest account and a more accurate description of the Indian-American experience, as it comes from a man who was both Indian and personally lived through the trials and hardships through the Sioux tribe.

What is so interesting about the story is the naïve attribute of Luther Standing Bear and his honest, open and yet hold fast integrity. His trusting nature was so evident through out the story and yet he did not lack any intelligence and understanding. Of course those Indians with such nature were taken advantage of, and yet Luther Standing Bear remains always optimistic. There were many hardships, as in the loss of his free world and native life to a utilitarian white man's world of hustle and capitalism.

First there was much land taken and much sold with fraudulent treaties with government subsidiaries supplied, but it was the White's destruction of natural resources, the loss of the Buffalo and available food that caused the Indian's independence to wain and turn to the White man's society. This in turn set them up for what came next:

"Then like a thunderbolt from a clear sky came on order from the Interior Department that all rations and annuity goods which had been issued to all able-bodied Indians were to be cut off unless the Indians were willing to work for them."

This both took many Indians away from their homes to labor and in Luther Standing Bear's case, three jobs he took to support himself. The John Stuart Mill version of democracy, it's utilitarian enforcement of productivity is now forced on the Indian culture, a people whose land and free paced life was removed from them.

Luther relates how many whites took advantage of the non-English speaking Indians signing fraudulent land selling agreements, including a few unscrupulous Indians as Spotted Tail, who did the selling. There was also mentioned his experience of observing those Indians who were promised to be brought to Washington to speak to the government, but were being unknowingly used as city stop side shows, with tickets sales to the white men's advantage.

There were also the innocent killing of many Indians, the force of White man's culture, including the clothes, the cutting of hair, the religious teachings, the restriction against using his native tongue, and yet in Luther Standing Bear considered it bravery and wisdom to adopt the white man's ways and learn as much as he can to prove to the world that the Indians were both capable and good at living and producing just as the white men. His attendance at the Carlyle School, his relations and actions towards those in charge were so admirable.

The was also the death of two of his children, the event of a terrible train crash, events that would leave a horrendous impact on any person, and this man, Luther Standing Bear, maintains a strength of internal character that is most impeccable of a high and honorable nature. Not many persons would have remained so, and there is no complaining from him here, no venting, only stating his objective observances of both positive and negative occurrences and his subjective opinions written in such fair assessments.

Luther also relates how his people missed a few chances to better their predicament with the government as in Buffalo Bill's attempt to speak to the president in behalf of them and another occurrence where an agent influenced many to protect his own monetary interests.

Between Luther and his father, they understood the white man's invasion of the Indian world was "thick" and it was in wisdom to adopt their ways in order to survive. The major drawback from all this was the adoption also meant assimilation, as the dress, the religion and the language of the Indian was discouraged by the white man to be beneath his culture as inferior.

And yet all of the above was not meant as partisan to negativity, but rather, Luther was always optimistic, anxious to please his instructors and employers, admirable in is his constant desire to please the people he worked with, Captain Pratt in the Carlyle School, his employer at the Department Store, Buffalo Bill and many others. And for this he was very well liked, including by myself.