Some of the Society's research is published elsewhere. Also included here are other books published by Society staff. These may be acquired by noting the author, title, and price, then following the instructions on the order form. You may also be interested in other categories of books, or visit the navigation page for all kinds of Society publications.

Richard E. Jensen and James S. Hutchins, Editors
Wheel Boats on the Missouri: The Journals and Documents of the Atkinson-O'Fallon Expedition, 1824-26.

2001, Montana Historical Society Press in association with the Nebraska State Historical Society,262 pp., 8 photographs, 1 map, index, cloth

Col. Henry Atkinson commanded some 475 troops on an expedition up the Missouri River to impress the Native American with the military might of the United States and to investigate rumors of Canadians illegally participating in the fur trade. Diaries by Atkinson and Maj. Stephen Watts Kearny describe the 3,000 mile trip. An introduction and numerous footnotes by Jensen and Hutchins provide the historical background, identify participants, and discuss the innovative man-powered wheel boats.

Richard E. Jensen, Editor
Happy As A Big Sunflower: Adventures in the West, 1876-1880.
By Rolf Johnson

2000, University of Nebraska Press in association with the Nebraska State Historical Society, 240 pp., contents, 9 photographs, 5 maps, index, paper

Twenty-year-old Rolf Johnson came to Nebraska in 1876. In his diary he described events in his life as a pioneer ranging from building sod houses and fighting prairie fires to his innocent romantic encounters. When he left home in 1879 his diary becomes a travelogue of his experiences in the Black Hills, Denver and the Southwest.

R. Eli Paul, Editor
The Nebraska Indian Wars Reader, 1865-1877

1998, University of Nebraska Press in association with the
Nebraska State Historical Society, 245 pages

This anthology of well-written articles from the journal Nebraska History is the essential introduction to this bitterly contested period in the state's history. Preface, introduction, epilogue, suggested readings, index; 50 photos, 6 maps.

Richard E. Jensen, editor
From Fort Laramie to Wounded Knee:
In the West That Was
by Charles W. Allen

1997, University of Nebraska Press in association with the
Nebraska State Historical Society, 286 pages, paper

The varied and colorful career of Charles Wesley Allen (1851-1942) took him throughout the northern Plains during an exceptionally turbulent era in its history. He was at the Red Cloud Agency when Red Cloud attempted to prevent the raising of the American flag and the Lakota nearly took over the agency. Allen also visited Deadwood at the height of the Black Hills gold rush, helped build the first government agency on the Pine Ridge reservation, and reported on the Lakota Ghost Dance. Allen happened to be walking through the Indian camp at Wounded Knee when shots rang out on December 29, 1890, and his is arguably the best of all the eyewitness accounts of that tragedy.

Based upon a manuscript in the collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Allen's previously unpublished account concerns of the years he described as "the most exciting chapter of my life." As much the chronicle of the passing of an era as a personal narrative, its simple, direct, and often moving prose captures the injustices, gritty details, and relentless energy of a period of dramatic change in the West.

R. Eli Paul, editor
Autobiography of Red Cloud, War Leader of the Oglalas

1997, Montana Historical Society Press, 220 pp., paper

Red Cloud--the only Native American leader ever to win a war against the United States Army. In the 1860s he destroyed Capt. William J. Fetterman's command, closed the Bozeman Trail, and forced the United States to a peace conference. A brilliant military strategist, Red Cloud honed his skills against his tribe's traditional enemies--the Pawnee, Shoshone, Arikara, and Crow--long before he fought to close the Bozeman Trail.

Here, for the first time in print, is the story of Red Cloud's early years as he told it to a white friend in the 1890s. This manuscript, from the collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society, brings us closer than the historical record ever has before to understanding the life of the Lakota's greatest war leader until the rise of Crazy Horse.

Richard E. Jensen, R. Eli Paul, and John E. Carter
Eyewitness at Wounded Knee

1991, University of Nebraska Press, 210 pp. 2011, softcover edition with new introduction by Heather Cox Richardson and re-scanned photographs.

This first book-length photographic history of events that led up to and followed the bloodshed at Wounded Knee, 1890-91, brings together and assesses 143 photographs, most from the collections of the Nebraska State Historical Society, made around the time of the massacre.

John E. Carter
Solomon D. Butcher: Photographing the American Dream

1985, University of Nebraska Press, 139 pp., cloth

For millions of Americans, Solomon D. Butcher's photographs epitomize the sod house frontier. His images, a collection of the Nebraska State Historical Society, constitute the most extensive photographic record in existence of the generation that settled the Great Plains. Their faces and places are imprinted on our mind--jaunty bachelors and earnest husbands (Civil War veterans of both armies), spinster sodbusters and determined mothers, cowhands, farmhands, and former slaves--all in search of land of their own. This first book devoted to Butcher and his photos presents a unique visual chronicle of that epoch, firmly establishing Butcher's place in frontier photography.

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