American Studies Commons^™

The “Broken Reed Of A Staff”: The Pawnee Agency, Pawnees, And Agent W. De Puy, 1861-1862, R. Paul Collister

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In January 1863 Henry W. De Puy published an open letter to the President. Through the previous year De Puy’s administration at the Pawnee Agency at Genoa, Nebraska Territory (N.T.), had been wrecked and he had been accused of stealing from the Pawnees and his own employees. The Indian Commissioner’s Office had turned him out of office without a hearing. Even President Lincoln had not seen fit to intervene on the agent’s behalf in a department of the President’s own executive branch. De Puy did not want his old job back. He seems to have been sincere in his desire …

Father And Servant, Son And Slave: Judaism And Labor In Georgia, 1732-1809, Kylie L. Mccormick

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 1732 a philanthropic trusteeship was granted the charter to Georgia with the lofty goals of bringing aid to the impoverished in the British Empire and the persecuted Protestants of Europe. Within these goals was an emphasis on using the labor of indentured white servants, an unofficial ban on slavery, and a reluctance to allow Jewish colonists. To understand how both slavery and Judaism took hold in Georgia, this two part study explores the changing labor institutions through the lives of Benjamin Sheftall and his youngest son Levi—the two men who maintained the first Vital Records for Savanah’s Jewry. Benjamin’s …

John Collier And Mexico In The Shaping Of U.S. Indian Policy: 1934-1945, Wilbert Terry Ahlstedt

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Relations between Mexico and the United States have often been tense and yet they have always been interrelated. In the nineteenth century Mexicans were viewed by their northern neighbors as degenerate racial hybrids. In terms of Native Americans and their relationship to land, Mexico was seen as an example of how not to conduct Indian policy. But during the 1930s, significant numbers of officials within the Roosevelt administration expressed interest in and admiration for Mexican domestic policy, especially in relation to Indian policy. One of the most enthusiastic proponents of Mexico’s federal Indian policy was U.S. Indian Commissioner John Collier. …

Ella Deloria: A Dakota Woman’S Journey Between An Old World And A New, Susana Grajales Geliga

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The subject of this thesis is a Yankton Dakota Sioux woman named Ella Cara Deloria who lived from 1889 to 1972. The intent of this thesis is to use her own construct of an educated Indigenous woman to examine her personal and professional life as a middle figure between a world of Dakota traditionalism and a modern academic arena during an era of intellectual curiosity about Native Americans. She flowed between these worlds to become a distinguished author and accomplished Dakota woman who built bridges of understanding between cultures. Ella initially set out to follow the patriarchs in her family …

"Hunger Is The Best Sauce": Frontier Food Ways In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books, Erin E. Pedigo

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House book series for the frontier food ways described in it. Studying the series for its food ways edifies a 19th century American frontier of subsistence/companionate families practicing both old and new ways of obtaining food. The character Laura in Wilder's books is an engaging narrator who moves through childhood and adolescence, assuming the role of housewife. An overview of the century's norms about food in America, the strength of domesticity as an ideal, food and race relations, and the frontier as a physical place round out this unexplored area of Little House …

Self-Advocacy Of Women In Sexualized Labor, 1880-1980s, Kim Marie Matthews

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study is to centralize, into women's history, the marginalized historical voices of women activists working in sexualized labor (and/or those using sexualized economic strategies). This thesis situates the work of Josie Washburn, a former madam who turned self advocate in 1907, squarely within the Progressive Era debate on prostitution, By centralizing women's voices of sexualized lahor, it provides a means to track the long-term evolution of the intersections between women's sexualized labor choices, traditional labor choices, self-advocacy, popular media, and social/political movements on behalf of women. This study asserts that a majority Progressive Era working women …

Cattle, Environment, And Economic Change: A History Of Cherry County, Nebraska’S Cattle Industry, From Earliest Times To 1940, Gail Lorna Didonato

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A modern cattle industry in Cherry County, Nebraska, developed as challenges of land use and pressures of economic change demanded new and flexible adaptation to the unique environment. Located in the Sandhills, a region only opened to legal white settlement after Indian removal in 1878, the area passed through phases of occupation. Open-range cattlemen drawn by lucrative local markets gave way to struggles over land use between farmers and ranchers. Early twentieth century legislation, the 1904 Kinkaid Act, designed to promote farm settlement, in the end, benefited ranchers the most. As the wedge to gain legal access to land ownership, …

Acculturation Among Swedish Immigrants In Kansas And Nebraska, 1870-1900, Terrence Jon Lindell

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Contemporary observers and many historians have maintained that Swedish immigrants rapidly assimilated into American society. This dissertation examines this conclusion by focusing on rural Swedish settlements in the Great Plains--the Lindsborg community in McPherson and Saline counties in Kansas and Burt, Phelps, Polk, and Saunders counties In Nebraska.

These immigrant communities, all founded in the two decades following the Civil War, typically were estabIished by Swedes who had spent some time in states east of the Great Plains and had thus already begun to assimilate. All of the settlements developed congregations of various denominations--either through religious schism or immigration by …

The Interior Department, War Department And Indian Policy, 1865-1887, Henry George Waltmann

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The present study focuses upon a significant, but neglected, aspect of Indian history — the inter-relation between the War and Interior departments and Indian policy. Some analysts have briefly mentioned the difficulty entailed in not having a clear understanding of which branch of government should act upon the tribes. “A cardinal error of the government," one prominent historian observes, "lay in tolerating a vague division of authority over the Indians between the war and interior department." Those primarily concerned with the Army's campaigns against hostile tribes have also mentioned the interdepartmental problem. "The Indian Bureau," one author states with obvious …