April 30, 2025
A new book from the Nebraska State Historical Society offers a “deep geography” of an American place, Richardson County, Nebraska, in the state’s southeast corner. An American Corner of the World by David J. Wishart is available at NSHS sites as well as online.
The book tells the story of the changing patterns and rhythms of life in Richardson County, from the first occupants, hunters and gatherers thousands of years ago, right through almost to the present.
In one sense, it is a county history, but in another sense it is a case-study, representative of innumerable rural counties throughout the Midwest and Great Plains that experienced similar stages of initial rapid population growth and subsequent sustained population decline.
Why then select Richardson County when so many other suitable case-studies could have been chosen?
The answer lies in the enduring presence there of Native Americans, with the Iowa and Sac and Fox reservations still occupying the southern reaches of the county. Their experiences over time are also representative of those of other Native American nations across the country, though again expressed locally in distinctive ways. This juxtaposition of accounts of Native American dispossession and American succession allows a fuller story to be told than if only one side were related, and identifies Richardson County as an intrinsically American corner of the world.
David J. Wishart is an emeritus professor of geography at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the editor of the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains and Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians and the author of several books, including An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians.
An American Corner of the World
By David J. Wishart
ISBN (13-digit): 978-0-933307-43-8; Price: $24.95, paperback
Features: 224 pages; 5.5 x 8.5 inches; 18 b/w photographs; 10 maps; 2 graphs; 2 illustrations; index
Published by the NSHS and sold at the Society’s museum and stores.
Also distributed and sold online by University of Nebraska Press.
