Voices of the American
West, Volume 1: The Indian Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 1903-1919, by Eli
Ricker, edited by Richard E. Jenson, University of Nebraska Press, 2012. 495
pages.
Voices of the American
West, Volume 2: The Settler and Soldier Interviews of Eli S. Ricker, 1903-1919,
by Eli Ricker, edited by Richard E. Jenson, University of Nebraska Press, 2012.
470 pages.
Eli Ricker, a Civil War veteran who marched with Sherman,
tried his hand at a number of occupations after the war, including lawyer,
judge, and newspaperman. He came to live in Chadron, Nebraska, in 1885, not far
from Fort Robinson, where Crazy Horse had been killed just eight years earlier.
Chadron was also in close proximity to the battlefields and reservations of
western South Dakota, and it was at Chadron around the turn of the century that
Ricker began conducting interviews, compiling notes, and doing research on the
rapidly changing “Old West.” His intention was to write a book he called, “The
Final Conflict Between the Red Men and the Palefaces,” but a quarter century
later he was still gathering material.
As early as 1903, Ricker, who spent two full winters on the
Pine Ridge Reservation -- began writing down eyewitness accounts about what
transpired at Wounded Knee both from the 7th Cavalry perspective as
well as from survivors of Big Foot’s Lakota Band. Ricker was sympathetic to the
plight of Indians at a time when white Americans nearly universally regarded
them as savages. Indeed, he advanced the radical proposition that Indian historical
testimony was as valuable and legitimate as that of the white man. One of Ricker’s notes, quoted in the
Introduction, gives a sense of his enlightened sensibilities: “The Indians
sneer at the whiteman’s conventional reference to the Custer massacre and the
Battle of Wounded Knee. They ridicule the lack of impartiality of the whites in
speaking of the two events – when the whites got the worst of it it was a
massacre; when the Indians got the worst of it it was a battle.”
Alas, Ricker’s long-researched book never materialized. A
stint at the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. allowed him to
fortify his research, but also served to overwhelm him with the amount of Indian
resources demanding his attention. Already past the age of 60 when he began the
project, Ricker died before he could complete more than some sections of a
rough draft.
Ricker left behind stacks of tablets containing
transcriptions of his interviews -- a treasure trove of unique and invaluable
oral histories. Happily, after selling much of his collection, including his
library, Ricker’s family donated the precious tablets to the Nebraska State
Historical Society, where they were received on November 2, 1926. The
collection remained relatively obscure for decades, though some Western
historians like Robert Utley have accessed it in support of their own studies
(Nebraskan Mari Sandoz cataloged and collated the interviews, and
incorporated some of the material in her writings as well).
Finally, the 2005 publication in two volumes of Voices of the American West has made
Ricker’s painstaking work readily available to scholars and history buffs alike
(being reviewed here are the 2012 paperback releases of both volumes). Editor
Richard Jensen has done an expert job organizing the Ricker material, intuitively
devoting one volume to Indian interviews, and the other to Settlers and
Soldiers. Within each volume, interviews are grouped together into major
subject areas. Volume one includes chapters on The Garnett and Wells
Interviews, The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee, and The Old West – Indians and
Indian Fights. Volume two chapters include: Wounded Knee, Little Bighorn,
Beecher Island, Lightning Creek Incident, Biographical Sketches, and The Old
West.
Though there is a heavy emphasis on military affairs in the
interviews, they also present perspectives on a broad range of other aspects
of the Old West, from life on the reservations to the fur trade. Fully 200
pages of volume one are devoted to interviews with William Garnett and Philip
F. Wells, mixed-blood men who spent decades as Lakota interpreters. Garnett and
Wells, in addition to discussing warfare, offer insights on treaties, Sun
Dances, Sioux customs, religion, and languages. Garnett, sometimes called Billy
Hunter, is reported to be the son of Confederate General Richard B. Garnett,
who died in Longstreet’s assault at Gettysburg. While stationed at Fort Laramie
before the war, Garnett took an Oglala woman, named Looks at Him, as his
common-law wife, resulting in the birth of William.
Maps, illustrations, useful appendixes and an exceedingly
generous index enhance the text, and Jensen’s voluminous endnotes not only
demonstrate his utter mastery of the subject matter (Jensen was a senior
research anthropologist at the Nebraska State Historical Society), but render
the oral histories exponentially more useful and interesting.
Bison Books, the trade paperback line of the University of Nebraska Press, has consistently released some of the most fascinating and
valuable works of American history. Voices of the American West is another
brilliant offering in a catalog of over 900 in-print titles spanning more than
50 years.
