Switzerland and Midwest Connections — Mari Sandoz: Swiss Story Catcher of the Great Plains
Welcome to the History Blog featuring the connections between Switzerland and the Midwest. I am Joerg Oberschmied, Deputy Consul General in Chicago. My interest in history started at an early age and continues to this day. The views expressed are solely mine and I hope you enjoy these journeys through time.
Mari Sandoz grew up on one of the last frontiers in the continental United States. The impressions of those early years formed her viewpoint on Native Americans. “I only knew the German-Swiss dialect of my grandmother,” she writes in These Were the Sioux. “The Indians made names for us children in their teasing way. Because our very busy mother kept my hair cut short, like my brothers, they called me short-furred-one.” Mary Susette Sandoz was born in Nebraska on May 11, 1896, the eldest child of Jules Ami and Mary Fehr Sandoz, his fourth wife. Having to care for her five younger siblings, she resented the role of homemaker and never grew close to her mother. The family was poor and Jules had a violent disposition with grand visions for the place they lived in. Mari portrayed her cantankerous, larger than life father in her masterpiece Old Jules, showing her fear and her admiration for him. From him she learned the impressive stories of the harsh and often tragic life pioneers encountered in the Great Plains. The book became a financial success for Mari, despite initially being rejected by thirteen publishers.
With Crazy Horse, she wrote one of the most important books of its genre in Western American literature, introducing readers to details of Indian belief and life on the Plains. Writing primarily from the Indian view, using symbols compatible with their culture, she conveyed information never before known to white Americans about the Indian wars.
Her sympathy for Native Americans is also evident in Cheyenne Autumn. It tells the story of two men and their followers as they attempt to return to their old home from the hated Oklahoma reservation in the fall of 1878. For the book, Sandoz drew from stories she heard as a child from ‘Old Cheyenne Woman’ and her father’s recollections of his conversations with a survivor of that winter. Her research to the book contributed important historical information, including details to the Sappa River massacre in Kansas taking place in 1878. With publication of the book, she also began public appearances to draw attention to the plight of the Cheyenne, albeit she raised the issue many years earlier in a letter to President Truman. “I do not apologize for the length of this letter,” she wrote, “I feel strongly on what is happening to the Northern Cheyennes. I am certain you would feel as strongly if you had seen what I saw this summer”. Truman’s policies towards Indians were complicated and not without controversy. While he supported measures that ultimately were detrimental to tribes, he also acted with sympathy toward them. Truman signed legislation calling for the termination of tribes, but he also went out of his way to extend equal rights to Native Americans.
With The Buffalo Hunters, Mari Sandoz followed the request of her publisher and used an animal as the central figure. Sandoz traces the buffalo history from 1867, when millions roamed the Plains, until two decades later, when they almost vanished. The deliberate destruction of the buffalo led in her view to the destruction of the Plains.
In The Story Catcher she writes of Oglala Sioux tribal life during the mid-1800s. The young hero grows up and learns the responsibilities of tribal life. The Story Writer Workshop and Festival in Nebraska takes its inspiration from the book to channel creative ideas into written works. In a 1956 time capsule, Mari made some astounding predictions of what life would be like in 2006. Some, like “most of man’s heavy burden of physical labor will be done by complex machines” are familiar reality. Others, like a transcontinental tube by which Omaha can be reached in less than an hour from either coast, remain on the drawing board. Mari Sandoz died of cancer in New York City in March 1966 and is buried near Gordon, Nebraska.
Please visit the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society at www.marisandoz.org, and the Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at www.sandozcenter.com. The Mari Sandoz Symposium is scheduled in Lincoln, Nebraska September 23–24, 2021. The Story Catcher Writing Workshop and Festival takes place June 14–17, 2021.
