Dakota: The Story of the Northern Plains by Norman K. Risjord (review)

At first glance, Dakota: The Story of the Northern Plains has much to offer. Norman K. Risjord, emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, has a long line of well- received publications. The works with which I am familiar are ones that would be considered popular history, as opposed to more formal, primary-source driven, footnote- laden texts meant for library collections and professional colleagues. Dakota, a work of similar style to his recent A Popular History of Minnesota, offered the promise of the proverbial “good read.”

And, at first glance, that is exactly what Dakota provides. There are amusing and interesting tales of Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Canary), Wild Bill Hickok, George McGovern, and William Langer. Lively vignettes of colorful characters and interesting events provide nonacademic readers an entrée to scholarship.

The problem, however, is that the Dakotas do not make for a good single-state or single-territorial history. There is far too great a variance in the states’ backgrounds to make blanket commentary regarding the formation, history, and future of the separate states of North and South Dakota. The result is a rather lightweight treatment of both, which does not take into consideration the variant Native American populations, the power of the railroads in each, or the long-term suspicions with which each viewed the other’s goals and influences. A volume on either of the Dakotas would have solved this problem, or otherwise one that only extended to the point of mutual statehoods, or perhaps even to the declaration of territorial status. To do otherwise is to conflate too much material and too great of divergences into a single, relatively brief text.

Dakota would have benefited significantly by a worthy editor’s close eye. Far too many errors creep into the text. To point to but a few: the North Dakota State Mill and Elevator is located in Grand Forks (not Fargo); the future state of South Dakota held its constitutional convention in Sioux Falls (not Pierre); Lewis and Clark did not visit but one hundred years ago; “Bismark,” North Dakota’s capital city, includes a “c”; “Devil’s Lake” is not possessive; and North Dakota’s initial constitution did not include prohibition. Ultimately, the reader can do better for him or herself.