Pawnee Foods
The Pawnee were one of the most important Native American tribes of the Plains area. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they were living in circular ...
Great Plains
What We Found
Pioneer Lawyers
A common misconception about the early Plains is that the region was virtually without law. According to this belief, citizens took the law into their own hands in the ...
The 1874 State Fair: A Time to Show Off (Updated August 2018)
These days, fairs promote entertainment, but when Nebraska was a new state, fairs were mostly seen as a way to promote Nebraska by demonstrating its potential for ...
Wind Wagon of the 1890s
Using the wind as a source of power, including locomotive power, is hardly new. "Wind wagon" stories intermittently appear in the history of the Great Plains, especially ...
Melbourne, the Rainmaker
Frank Melbourne was one of the best known of a small group of rainmakers active in the Great Plains during the early 1890s. A native of Australia, he came west from Ohio ...
Buffalo
Overland travelers almost always made some mention of buffalo. The mere sight of so many animals in such vast herds amazed them. Estimates have placed the number of ...
Buffalo and Cow Chips
The scarcity of wood west of the one hundredth meridian forced a reliance on animal-made fuel there. Buffalo excrement, when allowed to dry a few weeks in the hot Plains ...
Flashback Friday: Building a Log Cabin on the Treeless Plains
Historian Everett Dick referred to the Great Plains as the “sod-house frontier,” and Nebraska photographer Solomon Butcher made many iconic images of soddies, but ...
Miles, Mules, and Men: The Forgotten Front of the Civil War
Note: the word Indian is used instead of Native American as it was the norm at the time.
Imagine your car. Now consider the amount of gas that it requires to keep it ...
Sailing through Fort Kearny in a Wind Wagon
This artist’s conception of Samuel Peppard’s wind wagon as it was departing Fort Kearny in May 1860, appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper on July 7 of that ...
Upcoming Talk and Signing for New Book on Nov. 17
NSHS has released a new book, and you could get it signed! A Brave Soldier & Honest Gentleman: Lt. James E. H. Foster in the West, 1873-1881 features the never ...
The Changing Image of George Armstrong Custer
Lt. Col. George Custer was once considered “the model of a Christian warrior.” In the 1870s, poets called him heroic, splendid and glorious. One magazine editor called ...
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