Encounter on the Great Plains: Scandinavian Settlers and the Dispossession of Dakota Indians, 1890-1930 by Karen V. Hansen (review)

In the closing pages of Encounter on the Great Plains Karen V. Hansen, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Brandeis University, offers readers the opinion of Bjorne Knudson, a second-generation Norwegian immigrant whose family homesteaded on North Dakota's Spirit Lake Indian Reservation. Knudson, who Hansen interviewed in 1999, let forth with "well that's where I think they done a mistake. They let this land out to the white people to homestead or buy it or do anything. … I think they should have kept the white people off the reservation entirely" (237).

Thereby, Knudson succinctly sums up the issue before modern scholars of the relationships between Native American populations and those of European extraction. What should have been done to aid or to prevent the continuing pressure by European-Americans to move west, and, concomitantly, what should the federal government have done to ensure the continuing existence of the indigenous populations of the continent? Knudson would appear to believe that the lands his parents claimed should have been left to the Dakota Indians, neglecting the fact that Spirit Lake itself was a creation of the United States government.

Hansen came to her exploration of the dispersal of "excess" lands on Spirit Lake quite naturally: her maternal great-grandmother, Berthe Haugen, was one of the titular Scandinavians to claim land. And although her family moved on, the stories they told were of homesteading in North Dakota, clearing land to farm, and of the migration from Norway. The stories included a claim shack that Hansen, guided by a member of the Dakota, actually saw.

Stories—Hansen's, homesteaders and their descendants, as well as Dakota farmers and their descendants—are at the heart of Encounters on the Great Plains. As she dowses for stories, those of her own family also come to the fore. Moreover, she is the beneficiary of those who have interviewed before her.

Hansen discovered dozens of oral histories, housed at the State Historical Society in Bismarck, which staff members gathered during the 1970s. There were also collections associated with the American Indian Research Project and Indian Boarding Schools Oral History Project available at other institutions. While it is of merit that the materials exist for Hansen's use, as well as for the use of others, it would be of value for individuals to know the conditions under which the narrations of the 1970s were gathered and by whom. That problem will be distinctly lessened for the scholars who will use the records Hansen intends to donate to the University of North Dakota's Chester Fritz Library.

Hansen is a sociologist by trade and, on occasion, offers a bit of jargon that muddles the material rather than clarifies. Her inclusion of materials related to the Nonpartisan League seem somewhat out of place, as do her occasional references to Louis Garcia, a New York native of Spanish/Irish descent who she refers to as the "honorary tribal historian" (xxii). The work has much to commend itself, especially in the knowledge that so much oral history has been gathered on the reservation and land transfers. Future scholars with a more historical bent have a treasure in Encounters on the Great Plains.