Winner of the 2006 Caroline Bancroft History Prize "Impressively researched and highly readable, Barbara Handy-Marchello's analysis of North Dakota farm women's roles will become the standard by which other works on the subject will be judged." Paula M. Nelson, author of The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own In Women of the Northern Plains, Barbara Handy-Marchello tells the stories of the unsung heroes of North Dakota's settlement era: the farm women. As the men struggled to raise and sell wheat, the women focused on barnyard labor--raising chickens and cows and selling eggs and butter--to feed and clothe their families and maintain their households through booms and busts. Handy-Marchello details the hopes and fears, the challenges and successes of these women--from the Great Dakota Boom of the 1870s and '80s to the impending depression and drought of the 1930s. Women of the frontier willingly faced drudgery and loneliness, cramped and unconventional living quarters, the threat of prairie fires and fierce blizzards, and the isolation of homesteads located miles from the nearest neighbor. Despite these daunting realities, Dakota farm women cultivated communities among their distant neighbors, shared food and shelter with travelers, developed varied income sources, and raised large families, always keeping in sight the ultimate goal: to provide the next generation with rich, workable land. Enlivened by interviews with pioneer families as well as diaries, memoirs, and other primary sources, Women of the Northern Plains uncovers the significant and changing roles of Dakota farm women who were true partners to their husbands, their efforts marking the difference between success and failure for their families. Barbara Handy-Marchello is a history professor at the University of North Dakota. She has written articles on rural women and is the co-author of A History of the NDSU Seedstocks Project. She lives near Fargo, North Dakota.

"The first comprehensive work highlighting the diversity of women's experiences on the North American Plains; twelve essays present women's perspectives from prehistory to the present, across the northern, central, and southern plains"--Provided by publisher.

Covering a wide range of topics, this volume presents case studies which focus on particular aspects of the female condition in Plains Indian societies, mostly concentrated on tribal groups in the northern Plains region of the United States and Canada. The focus is primarily historical, dealing with the conditions of Plains Indian women in the pre-reservation period, but also contains selections concerned with the role and status of women in the modern reservation era.

Originally published: North Haven: Archon Books, 1995.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Beautifully illustrated account of quilts created by modern Indian women of the Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Cree, Mandan, Sioux & other tribes. Over 50 full-color photos document the beauty, drama & power of their creations.

The Apsáalooke people, also known as the Crow, are noted for their bravery and artistry, twin pillars of a centuries-old culture rooted in the landscape of the Northern Plains. This book, published in conjunction with a multi-site exhibition jointly organized by the Field Museum and the Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago, offers a rich narrative of the Apsáalooke paste with a keen eye on issues that concern present-day Apsáalooke identity. Apsáalooke Women and Warriors features contributions by contemporary Apsáalooke artists, intellectuals, and writers. Together, they constitute a major statement on the cosmologies, iconographies, and lifeways of the Apsáalooke people past, present--and, above all--future.

Walking in the Sacred Manner is an exploration of the myths and culture of the Plains Indians, for whom the everyday and the spiritual are intertwined, and women play a strong and important role in the spiritual and religious life of the community. Based on extensive first-person interviews by an established expert on Plains Indian women, Walking in the Sacred Manner is a singular and authentic record of the participation of women in the sacred traditions of Northern Plains tribes, including Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, and Assiniboine. Through interviews with holy women and the families of women healers, Mark St. Pierre and Tilda Long Soldier paint a rich and varied portrait of a society and its traditions. Stereotypical images of the Native American drop away as the voices, dreams, and experiences of these women (both healers and healed) present insight into a culture about which little is known. It is a journey into the past, an exploration of the present, and a view full of hope for the future.

Land is often known by the names of past owners. "Emma's Land", "Gina's quarter", and "the Ingeborg Land" are reminders of the many women who homesteaded across North Dakota in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Land in Her Own Name records these homesteaders' experiences as revealed in interviews with surviving homesteaders and their families and friends, land records, letters, and diaries. These women's fascinating accounts tell of locating a claim, erecting a shelter, and living on the prairie. Their ethnic backgrounds include Yankee, Scandinavian, German, and German-Russian, as well as African-American, Jewish, and Lebanese. Some were barely twenty-one, while others had reached their sixties. A few lived on their land for life and "never borrowed a cent against it"; others sold or rented the land to start a small business or to provide money for education.

In Grasslands Grown Molly P. Rozum explores the two related concepts of regional identity and sense of place by examining a single North American ecological region: the U.S. Great Plains and the Canadian Prairie Provinces. All or parts of modern-day Alberta, Montana, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Manitoba form the center of this transnational region. As children, the first postconquest generation of northern grasslands residents worked, played, and traveled with domestic and wild animals, which introduced them to ecology and shaped sense-of-place rhythms. As adults, members of this generation of settler society worked to adapt to the northern grasslands by practicing both agricultural diversification and environmental conservation. Rozum argues that environmental awareness, including its ecological and cultural aspects, is key to forming a sense of place and a regional identity. The two concepts overlap and reinforce each other: place is more local, ecological, and emotional-sensual, and region is more ideational, national, and geographic in tone. This captivating study examines the growth of place and regional identities as they took shape within generations and over the life cycle.