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Acknowledgments First and foremost, thank you to Dr. Robert H. Ruby for his willingness to allow us to publish his letters, which had been stored away for decades in the bottom of a cabinet in his home in Moses Lake, Washington . For several years we had been working with Dr. Ruby on historical projects related to his life, his writing career with his long-time coauthor John A. Brown, and Pacific Northwest Indian and white relations generally.In the course of our collaborations,Dr.Ruby frequently mentioned that he had been the head of the hospital on the Pine Ridge reservation and that he had written extensively about his service there. What he had composed were letters addressed to his sister, but when he spoke of his correspondence he often referred to what he called his “Pine Ridge diary.”Like curious historians are inclined to do, we began asking him about the nature of his documentation. Initially Dr. Ruby shrugged off the importance of the letters, and our conversations with him really did not go very far. But we were persistent, and eventually he agreed to locate and share the letters with us. The fact is that so much time had elapsed since Dr. Ruby had last looked at the letters (nearly a half century), he retained only a vague recollection of what was specifically contained in them, and, like us, he was startled to discover their elaborate and detailed descriptions of the functioning of the hospital and the overall state of affairs on the Pine Ridge reservation in the middle 1950s.The letters also revealed the story of Dr. Ruby and his late wife’s experiences and the at once tragic and inspiring circumstances of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Over time we came to believe that the letters were far too valuable to be stuffed back into x Acknowledgments that cabinet where they were likely to remain until someone at some point (and unthinkably to us historians) simply disposed of them. So the decision was made to edit them for publication. In guiding that process through to completion, we are grateful to the editors of the University of Nebraska Press for their receptive response and their immediate and sustained enthusiasm.We are also deeply indebted to the expert assistance and unflagging good cheer extended by Rose Krause, archivist extraordinaire at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, where Dr. Ruby’s extensive collection of personal papers is housed.We thank Benjamin Reifel’s daughter, Loyce Reifel Anderson, for her generous assistance in providing information about her father. At Pine Ridge we were assisted by Cheryl Hemingway,who shared with us rare family photographs of Pine Ridge, and Lisa Schrader-Dillon of the Oglala Sioux Tribe,who gave us an extensive tour of the still-standing old hospital building. Joe Svara grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation and from 1948 to 1957 owned and operated Joe’s Market in Pine Ridge. Joe now lives in Sturgis, South Dakota, but met us in Rapid City to share his memories. Father Peter Klink, sj, president of Red Cloud Indian School (formerly Holy Rosary Mission),spent an afternoon filling us in on current conditions on the reservation.After all these years still a resident of McCall, Idaho, Dr. Ruby’s sister (and the recipient of his letters), Marion Johnson, was always helpful and a delightful traveling companion (along with Dr. Ruby, she accompanied us to Pine Ridge), while closer to home we thank our families for their love, perseverance , and understanding: Cary’s wife, Tina, and sons, James and Nick Collins, and Charlie’s mother, Denise Mutschler. ...

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