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Remember The Wind: A Prairie Memoir
1965
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1963
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January 29, 2025
Remember the Wind. A Prairie Memoir.
by William McK. Chapman, J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1965, hardcover, dustjacket, 240 pages, 8°
William McK[issack] Chapman was a former journalist from Brooklyn NY that had spent several years as a correspondent for Time-Life magazine in the 1940s and 1950s in postwar Europe. He took his family in 1958 to the windswept plains at Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. One of their sons was suffering from severe asthma and it was thought that the dry climate of the high plains might benefit him. Chapman, then already in his fifties, was appointed administrator of the St. Elizabeth Mission school near Wakpala which was maintained and financed by the Episcopal Church. He found that many of the Lakota people at the reservation lived in impoverished circumstances, in poor housing conditions and subjected to substandard resources ranging from poor housing, sanitation, access to fresh water and adequate food supplies. The village of Wakpala had more or less a collection of shacks and meagre stores, whereas lack of opportunities, employment and also alcoholism. The school facilities at St. Elizabeth were in bad condition, Chapman and his wife began efforts to renovate and repair the dilapidated buildings and equipment as best as they were able to do so with the meager resources provided by the Episcopal church. This book recounts the experiences of their three years at St. Elizabeth, their interactions with the pupils of the school, the parents and the school staff. Chapman, being a middle-aged easterner from an entirely different background and world, was ill prepared to run a mission school at an Indian reservation. He was very well aware of the background history of the Lakota and expressed admiration for their resilience as well as acknowledging the great wrongs done to them by the greed of the white invaders and colonizers. Yet Chapman was never really able to connect to and really understand the Lakota culture and way of life. His efforts on improving the infrastructure and the conditions at St. Elizabeth school ultimate failed. It permanently closed 6 years after Chapman's departure in 1967.
The book is well written and offers a glimpse into the conditions at Standing Rock reservation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He describes numerous memorable events, highlights as well as low points and what he perceived as setbacks. It is by all accounts a good book and worth reading.
by William McK. Chapman, J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1965, hardcover, dustjacket, 240 pages, 8°
William McK[issack] Chapman was a former journalist from Brooklyn NY that had spent several years as a correspondent for Time-Life magazine in the 1940s and 1950s in postwar Europe. He took his family in 1958 to the windswept plains at Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. One of their sons was suffering from severe asthma and it was thought that the dry climate of the high plains might benefit him. Chapman, then already in his fifties, was appointed administrator of the St. Elizabeth Mission school near Wakpala which was maintained and financed by the Episcopal Church. He found that many of the Lakota people at the reservation lived in impoverished circumstances, in poor housing conditions and subjected to substandard resources ranging from poor housing, sanitation, access to fresh water and adequate food supplies. The village of Wakpala had more or less a collection of shacks and meagre stores, whereas lack of opportunities, employment and also alcoholism. The school facilities at St. Elizabeth were in bad condition, Chapman and his wife began efforts to renovate and repair the dilapidated buildings and equipment as best as they were able to do so with the meager resources provided by the Episcopal church. This book recounts the experiences of their three years at St. Elizabeth, their interactions with the pupils of the school, the parents and the school staff. Chapman, being a middle-aged easterner from an entirely different background and world, was ill prepared to run a mission school at an Indian reservation. He was very well aware of the background history of the Lakota and expressed admiration for their resilience as well as acknowledging the great wrongs done to them by the greed of the white invaders and colonizers. Yet Chapman was never really able to connect to and really understand the Lakota culture and way of life. His efforts on improving the infrastructure and the conditions at St. Elizabeth school ultimate failed. It permanently closed 6 years after Chapman's departure in 1967.
The book is well written and offers a glimpse into the conditions at Standing Rock reservation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He describes numerous memorable events, highlights as well as low points and what he perceived as setbacks. It is by all accounts a good book and worth reading.
Displaying 1 of 1 review