Professional Documents
Culture Documents
EDITOR
Charles A. Braithwaite
Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS
David Ruigh and Melissa A. Marsh
COPYEDITOR
Lona Dearmont
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Richard Edwards
Director, Center for Great Plains Studies
Economics, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Frances W. Kaye
English, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
David J. Wishart
Geography, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
PUBLISHED BY THE CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES AND THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
GREAT PLAINS
QUARTERLY FALL 2013 VOL. 33 NO. 4
CONTENTS
William Swagerty, Foreword by James P. Ronda Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty, and
The Indianization of Lewis and Clark Karla Armbruster, eds.
BY CLARISSA W. CONFER 253 The Bioregional Imagination:
Literature, Ecology, and Place
Jim Garry BY JENNY KERBER 260
Weapons of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
BY BROOKE WIBRACHT 255 Candace Savage
A Geography of Blood: Unearthing
Doreen Chaky Memory from a Prairie Landscape
Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs and U.S. Soldiers BY SUSAN NARAMORE MAHER 261
on the Upper Missouri, 1854–1868
BY STEVEN C. HAACK 255 Mark Andrew White, ed.,
Foreword by David L. Boren,
Stanley B. Kimball and Violet T. Kimball Introduction by Mary Jo Watson
Villages on Wheels: A Social History of the The James T. Bialac Native American
Gathering to Zion Art Collection: Selected Works
BY W. PAUL REEVE 256 BY EMMA I. HANSEN 262
R. M. JOECKEL
EDITOR’S NOTE: Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood In- can lives in the shadows of the post-Custer and
dian’s Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect Jus- pre–American Indian Movement era—in its well-
tice, by William E. Farr, was selected as the recipient researched and skillful narrative of what is a sin-
of the 2013 Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize. I gularly incredible story.
asked one of the Book Prize judges, Dr. R. M. Joeckel, A talented writer of historical fiction would
University of Nebraska–Lincoln, to comment on the be very hard pressed to have woven a more un-
book and the selection process. Dr. Joeckel is Professor likely tale than the utterly true one of Spopee,
and Research Geologist, School of Natural Resources, a Canadian Blackfoot (Blood) convicted of mur-
Conservation and Survey Division (Nebraska Geologi- dering a white hunter named Charles Walmesley
cal Survey), as well as Professor in the Department of in the notoriously anarchic “Whoop-Up” border
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Curator of Geol- country of northwestern Montana in 1879. The
ogy at the University of Nebraska State Museum. protracted machinations of the nascent but po-
litically charged judicial system of Montana Terri-
After long deliberations by members of three tory eventually left Spopee awaiting execution by
subcommittees and the chairs of those commit- hanging in early 1881, but unbeknownst to him,
tees, the Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize his journey into the arcane depths of American
was awarded to Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood In- history was just beginning. There was to be no
dian’s Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect hanging after all. An unexpected commutation
Justice, by William E. Farr, published by the Uni- of his sentence and the inadequacies of the ter-
versity of Oklahoma Press. As the chair of the ritorial prison system occasioned his internment
prize committee, I am pleased to state that many at the Detroit House of Corrections, some 1,800
fine books were submitted for the competition, miles from the scene of the crime. Less than fif-
and that each of them was meritorious in some teen months after his arrival in Detroit, the in-
way. Nevertheless, Blackfoot Redemption is unique mate found himself whisked 500 miles yet farther
among the submissions—and indeed among the eastward to Washington, DC, to a near-lifetime
vast majority of accounts of Plains Native Ameri- of confinement at the Government Hospital for
the Insane, more kindly known as St. Elizabeth’s, who, according to a latter-day Native American
of Civil War fame. Thus, in a space of less than commentator, “was just like a white guy.” Preoc-
three years, an aboriginal man who had hardly cupied with property, position, money, and the
seen a white man in his youth came to be the prospect of government benevolence, Spopee
ward of a Euro-American government in its teem- didn’t even live for a year beyond his grand
ing seat of power. “homecoming” to Montana and reunion with a
Although Farr does a very good job in piec- daughter who really never knew him.
ing together snippets of knowledge and medical As well or better than any other author, Farr
reports, unfortunately, we will never know much manages the narrative transition from Spopee’s
about this strange man caught in the strangest of trial, his first brush with fame, through his ill-doc-
circumstances. The non-English-speaking Spopee umented and forgotten years of hospitalization,
effectively ceased anything like coherent commu- to his headline-grabbing rediscovery and pardon.
nication shortly after his admission to the Gov- Farr’s account of Spopee’s anticlimactic demise
ernment Hospital for the Insane and withdrew provides ample basis for the reader to sympa-
into a private world of quiet, order, routine, and thize, yet it avoids pathos and, gratefully, allows
a weird fascination with the creative counterfeit- the reader to draw his or her own conclusion
ing of currency and its ritualized exchange. The from the convoluted tale. Although Farr claims
he knew for many years “the intriguing if sketchy
latter, along with the gradual acquisition of a lim-
outlines of the Spopee story, as have others [my em-
ited degree of English literacy, a pinstriped suit,
phasis],” that he was able to elaborate, much less
and a moustache that would not have been out of
bring to life, the story of Spopee is achievement
place on William Howard Taft, can collectively be
enough. The clarity of his writing and complete-
viewed as Spopee’s attempt at assimilation to an
ness of his factual accounting, together with the
unfathomably foreign world.
tempering of his noteworthy objectivity with a
Aptly likened by author Farr simultaneously
subtle but thoroughgoing empathy, render Black-
to the fictitious Rip Van Winkle and to the all- foot Redemption truly prizeworthy. Finally, Farr’s
too-real Ishi, the crudely designated “last wild In- epilogue, unlike a host of others, is one actually
dian in America,” Spopee is a man out of place worth reading.
and time, an antique and a prototype at once, the The incredible story of Spopee is so well
attacker-become-victim, and both casualty and framed and related by Farr that it can be viewed
survivor. The cliché induced by Spopee’s tale is as the story of a man, the story of a people, or
deflected, however, by the personal tragedy em- the story of the changing times. It can certainly
bedded in it. A murder on the frontier becomes be taken as another account of the maltreatment
a sepia vignette of a bygone and seemingly irrel- and culture shock of Native Americans in the
evant era as Spopee accelerates away from his past centuries of dishonor, but it emerges with equal
and becomes enveloped in the secreted world of a merit as the saga of a single person who, irrespec-
well-meaning but ill-informed bureaucracy. When tive of his race, culture, means, and social station,
he was finally discovered by visiting Blackfoot dig- is unexpectedly, completely, and irreversibly sev-
nitaries in 1914, themselves active participants in ered from his frame of reference and becomes,
a machine-age nation, Spopee was a man from to employ a hackneyed but appropriate phrase,
whom identity and family had been amputated. “lost in the system.” Spopee is the forgotten man,
Following a second brush with passing fame and many times over, and despite his queer adaptabil-
a presidential pardon, he emerged as the Chris- ity, he is a victim of his own resilience. Therein
tianized and carefully groomed Spopee Purifies lies an object lesson for all of us.
Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri
The Long Civil War on the Border
%DITED BY *ONATHAN %ARLE AND $IANE -UTTI "URKE
“A splendid primer that addresses the quintessential political
and social issues that defined the fiercely contested western
border. Going well beyond the traditional timeframe for the
‘Civil War era,’ it explores not just the antebellum and war
years, but also the decades of reflection that followed.”
—Daniel E. Sutherland, author of A Savage Conflict: The
Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War
“A fine anthology that underscores the central place of Kansas
and Missouri in relation to the Civil War. It offers nuanced
and wide-ranging explorations of history presented in an
entertaining fashion.”—William Garrett Piston, editor of A
Rough Business: Fighting the Civil War in Missouri
Contributors: Aaron Astor, Joseph M. Beilein Jr., Diane Mutti
Burke, Brent M. S. Campney, Jonathan Earle, Kristen K. Epps,
Nicole Etcheson, Michael Fellman, John W. McKerley,
Tony R. Mullis, Jeremy Neeley, Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel,
Christopher Phillips, Pearl T. Ponce, Jennifer L. Weber
PAGES PHOTOGRAPHS #LOTH 0APER
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