Rooted in the Plains

The Fort at the Edge of the World

Summer Season Episode 1 On a bluff above the Missouri River, 200 miles from the nearest American settlement, the United States built its largest military post in 1819. Nearly a thousand people called it home: soldiers, officers, families. They were sent to project American power into the frontier, hold back British fur traders, and keep the peace with the surrounding nations: the Pawnee, the Omaha, the Sioux, the Arikara.  In this episode, we step inside the walls with Andrew, a living history re-enactor and Friend of Fort Atkinson, to get a feel for what daily life actually looked like. The rations. The whiskey. The discipline, the isolation, and the particular strangeness of being a soldier at the edge of the known American world. And we leave you with a question. It was November 1819. A Nebraska winter is closing in. Something was about to go very, very wrong. Find out next week (May 27, 2026) in Part 2.  For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, and a behind the scenes look at what we’re getting into this summer, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Plan Your Visit Fort Atkinson's next living history weekend is June 6th and 7th, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. Free with a Nebraska State Park entry permit. Fort Atkinson State Historical Park — Nebraska Game & Parks [https://outdoornebraska.gov/location/fort-atkinson/] Friends of Fort Atkinson — fortatkinsononline.org [https://www.fortatkinsononline.org/] Want to Learn More Johnson, Sally A. “The Sixth’s Elysian Fields: Fort Atkinson on the Council Bluffs.” Nebraska History 40 (1959): 1–38. Wesley, Edgar Bruce. “Life at a Frontier Post: Fort Atkinson, 1823–1826.” Journal of the American Military Institute Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter 1939): 202–209. Diary of James Kennerly, 1823–1826. Missouri Historical Society Collections Vol. VI, No. 1 (1928).

Deep Roots, Wide Open Future

Two years ago, I took a walk around a lake. The tallgrass was moving in the wind, and if I was lucky, a red-winged blackbird. That's where this podcast started. In this episode, I close out Season 2, eight episodes across the Great Plains, from South Dakota to Oklahoma and look ahead to what's coming next. I share a bit about how Rooted in the Plains got started and where I want to see it go. Including something I'm really excited about for this fall. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to get involved? * Partner with the podcast: rootedintheplains@outlook.com or Instagram @rootedintheplains [https://www.instagram.com/rootedintheplains/] * Share your Plains story: My Plains Story [https://forms.gle/YCNDRB9giMPXgCj38]

Off the Record

Every episode leaves something on the research desk. The details that didn't quite fit. The rabbit holes that led somewhere unexpected. The questions the records wouldn't answer. Today we're opening the files. In this episode, we go back to three stories from Season 2, the ones I couldn't stop thinking about long after the microphone was off. A Nebraska son hired to evaluate the Carnegie library program, who told an uncomfortable truth and watched his report disappear. A sacred building in Deadwood's Chinatown that burned under suspicious circumstances, and the case that was never closed. And two researchers documenting the same Indigenous plant knowledge at the same time, through completely different methods, producing completely different records. Three episodes. Three things I couldn't let go of. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? * Erickson, David L. "Melvin Randolph Gilmore, Incipient Cultural Ecologist: A Biographic Analysis." Master's thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1971. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/opentheses/60/ * Fosha, Rose Estep, and Christopher Leatherman. "The Chinese Experience in Deadwood, South Dakota." Historical Archaeology 42, no. 3 (2008): 97–110.  * Latham, Joyce M. "Clergy of the Mind: Alvin S. Johnson, William S. Learned, the Carnegie Corporations, and the American Library Association." The Library Quarterly 80, no. 3 (July 2010): 249–265. * Pollak, Oliver B. A State of Readers: Nebraska's Carnegie Libraries. Lincoln, NE: J & L Lee Co., 2005, pp. 165–172.  * Waheenee, Edward Goodbird, and Gilbert Livingstone Wilson. Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987.  * Wong, Edith C., Eileen French, and Rose Estep Fosha. "Deadwood's Pioneer Merchant: Wong Fee Lee and His Wing Tsue Bazaar." South Dakota History 39, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 283–335.

What the Prairie Knew

Before the plow broke the prairie, the prairie was already a library. Every plant had a name. Every name carried a use. Every use carried a story. In this episode, we explore the deep relationship between the peoples of the Great Plains and the plant life they had cultivated, tended, and understood for centuries. From the sacred cottonwood along the river bottoms to the purple coneflower in your supplement aisle, the knowledge was always there, built over generations of watching, experimenting, teaching, and remembering. And when that world began to fracture, a few people recognized what was at stake. Some of what they gathered survives. And the work didn't stop there. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? * Erickson, David L. "Melvin Randolph Gilmore, Incipient Cultural Ecologist: A Biographic Analysis." Master's thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1971. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/opentheses/60/ [https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/opentheses/60/] * Gilmore, Melvin R. Uses of plants by the Indians of the Missouri River region. Washington, Govt. print. off, 1919. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/20009591/ * Kindscher, Kelly, Loren Yellow Bird, Michael Yellow Bird, and Logan Sutton. Sahnish (Arikara) Ethnobotany. Tacoma: Society of Ethnobiology, 2020. https://ethnobiology.org/publications/contributions/sahnish-arikara-ethnobotany [https://ethnobiology.org/publications/contributions/sahnish-arikara-ethnobotany] Other Kindscher books and publications: https://kindscher.ku.edu/publications

A Line in the Sod: Oklahoma Land Runs

Note: This episode opens with a gunshot sound effect.  On September 16, 1893, a gun was fired at noon, and 100,000 people surged across the Oklahoma plains in the largest land run in American history. Within 2 hours, 6.5 million acres were claimed. Cities appeared overnight. The frontier, they said, was finally settled. But a young Tonkawa woman was already there, lying flat in the grass at the edge of her family's field, feeling the hoofbeats in her teeth. In this episode, we follow the process that made the Oklahoma Land Runs possible, the Dawes Act of 1887, the Jerome Commission's hard bargaining and deception, and the quiet arithmetic of tribal land ceded for cents on the dollar. We hear from Oklahoma's first territorial governor, who wrote frankly about the chaos and the cost. And we sit with the Tonkawa, who kept their allotments, watched a town spring up on their former land, and watched it be named after them. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? * Berthrong, Donald J. "Legacies of the Dawes Act: Bureaucrats and Land Thieves at the Cheyenne-Arapaho Agencies of Oklahoma." Arizona and the West 21, no. 4 (1979): 335–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40168884 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/40168884]  * Da', Laura. "Passing the Frontier." Prairie Schooner 96, no. 1 (2022): 79–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45474106 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/45474106]  * Faulk, Odie B. "Land of the Fair God and the Run for Land." History News 44, no. 5 (1989): 7–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42652022 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/42652022]  * Hasskarl, Robert A. "The Culture and History of the Tonkawa Indians." Plains Anthropologist 7, no. 18 (1962): 217–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25666463 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/25666463]  * Hefley, Maurice. A Pioneer at the Land Openings in Oklahoma. Summer 1962. Oklahoma Historical Society. https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc2123819/ [https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc2123819/]  * Steele, George W. Report of the Governor of Oklahoma to the Secretary of the Interior, 1891. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891. https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6155&context=indianserialset [https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6155&context=indianserialset]