An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians

by David J. Wishart

Of all the interactions between American Indians and Euro-Americans, none was as fundamental as the acquisition of the indigenous peoples’ lands. To Euro-Americans this takeover of lands was seen as a natural right, an evolution to a higher use; to American Indians the loss of homelands was a tragedy involving also a loss of subsistence, a loss of history, and a loss of identity.

 

Historical geographer David J. Wishart tells the story of the dispossession process as it affected the Nebraska Indians—Otoe-Missouria, Ponca, Omaha, and Pawnee—over the course of the nineteenth century. Working from primary documents, and including American Indian voices, Wishart analyzes the spatial and ecological repercussions of dispossession. Maps give the spatial context of dispossession, showing how Indian societies were restricted to ever smaller territories where American policies of social control were applied with increasing intensity. Graphs of population loss serve as reference lines for the narrative, charting the declining standards of living over the century of dispossession. Care is taken to support conclusions with empirical evidence, including, for example, specific details of how much the Indians were paid for their lands. The story is told in a language that is free from jargon and is accessible to a general audience.

Genres: History

309 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 1995

Reviews

[Julie Greene]

This is an excellent and engaging history of the Pawnee, Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, and Ponca tribes of the Great Plains. Their story is so different from the better-known histories of the Lakota or Comanche, but so important for understanding the history of the midwest. The book begins in the late eighteenth century and sweeps across to the end of the nineteenth. The complex dynamics that ended traditional ways of life--disease, decimation of the buffalo, intrusion by white Americans, corruption and inhumanity by the US government and its military, and raids conducted by other Native Americans--pushed these groups out of their homelands step by step. Pair this with Margaret Jacobs's excellent work, After One Hundred Winters.

[Dalton Peters]

Great layout of information of 19th and 20th century Nebraskan Indians. Great for study and insightful into Indian life.

[Catherine Richmond]

The American Darfur.

[KT]

I definitely learned some thing from this book, but it was full of numbers, and kept jumping from tribe to tribe, so it was hard for me to stay focused on.