MEET THE AUTHORS & BOOK SIGNING

This event is a precursor to the 2018 South Dakota State Historical Society History Conference, held at the Rapid City Best Western Ramkota Hotel, April 26-28. More information can be found at history.sd.gov.

VIRGINIA DRIVING HAWK SNEVE, the daughter of an Episcopal priest and a Lakota Sioux mother, was born and raised on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, she has authored several books for young adult readers, both fiction and nonfiction, including Completing the Circle, Standing Bear of the Ponca, The Christmas Coat: Memories of My Sioux Childhood, and Jimmy Yellow Hawk. Sneve received her B.S. and M.Ed. from South Dakota State University and taught English throughout the state and at the Flandreau Indian School. The recipient of the Native American Prose Award and the Spirit of Crazy Horse Award, she is the first South Dakotan to receive the National Humanities Medal.

For Sioux Women, Sneve combed through the winter counts and oral records of her ancestors to discover their past. The result illuminates the struggles and joys of her grandmothers and other women who maintained tribal life as circumstances changed and outside cultures pushed for dominance.Sioux women are the center of tribal life and the core of the tiospaye, the extended family. They maintain the values and traditions of Sioux culture, but their own stories and experiences often remain untold. Sneve’s storytelling powers enliven her personal exploration of the roles of Sioux girls and women, making the book an accessible journey into modern American Indian society.

MICHAEL M. CASLER is a former park ranger with the National Park Service, Casler is currently working as an independent historical researcher. Casler is the author of Steamboats of the Fort Union Fur Trade (1999) and editor of The Original Journals of Charles Larpenteur (2007). He has also written numerous articles on the Upper Missouri fur trade from his home in Williston, North Dakota.

Casler co-edited, with W. Raymond Wood, Fort Tecumseh and Fort Pierre Chouteau: Journal and Letter Books, which details two trading posts as did the heart of modern-day South Dakota, where the Bad River meets the Missouri near the contemporary town of Fort Pierre. Various firms established posts here starting in 1817. Fort Tecumseh (1822) and Fort Pierre Chouteau (1832), reached their golden age under the American Fur Company in the 1830s and 1840s. While company employees recorded daily activities in journals, they relayed company business as well as personal information about the individuals at the post in letter books. Letter books, which contained copies of all outgoing correspondence, were once common items at all posts on the upper Missouri, but only a few survive today. Those that do vividly illustrate the nature of commerce on the Northern Great Plains during the first half of the nineteenth century.