Mari Sandoz, 1896-1966

Mari Sandoz, born in Sheridan County, Nebraska, was a historian, novelist, and teacher who brought the history and people of the Plains to life in many books, articles, and stories. Although she lived much of her life in the East, she was buried in her own West. She was first famed for Old Jules (1935), the story of her father and other settlers who came to the upper Niobrara region in the late nineteenth century. Her greatest achievement was a series of six related books on life as it developed with Indian and white men in the trans-Missouri country: The Beaver Men, Crazy Horse, Cheyenne Autumn, The Buffalo Hunters, The Cattlemen, and Old Jules. In these and a dozen other volumes, she presented the drama of man on the Great Plains more completely, accurately, and vividly than anyone before her had done. She became internationally known as a chronicler of the West and as an expert on Indian history, seeking to understand all of life by understanding how man shaped the Plains country, and how it shaped him.

Nebraska · United States