These Were the Sioux (Bison Book S)

Product Description

“The Sioux Indians came into my life before I had any preconceived notions about them,” writes Mari Sandoz about the visitors to her family homestead in the Sandhills of Nebraska when she was a child.
These Were the Sioux, written in her last decade, takes the reader far inside a world of rituals surrounding puberty, courtship, and marriage, as well as the hunt and the battle.

Review

”
These Were the Sioux compels attention because it is authoritative; it compels admiration because it was written from the heart.” —V.P. Hass,
Chicago Sunday Tribune
(V.P. Hass
Chicago Sunday Tribune)

“The Sioux book gives the lore and logic of Indian life. It is rapid reading. Yet it unobtrusively overflows with Miss Sandoz’s lifetime love and respect for these plains pioneers, and with her careful insights into their ways.” —R. C. Nelson,
Christian Science Monitor
(R. C. Nelson
Christian Science Monitor)

“Here in these well established patterns of conduct . . . is a picture of an orderly, deeply respected way of life that is no more. . . . A worthwhile appraisal.” —
Kirkus
(
Kirkus)

“It clearly demonstrates the understanding of Indians that can be offered by a gifted, sensitive writer who has had extensive first-hand knowledge of the Indian people about whom she writes.” —J. C. Ewers,
Saturday Review of Literature
(J. C. Ewers
Saturday Review of Literature)

From the Back Cover

The Sioux Indians came into my life before I had any preconceived notions about them, or about anyone else. In our family no formal pattern of philosophical or religious thought was thrust upon the children, and I was left free to learn about our Indian friends as I did about the rest of our neighborhood of mixed beliefs, languages and origins-homeseeking immigrant Poles, Czechs, Irish, Dutch, French, Germans, Danes, Swiss, a few Serbs, a Bulgar, a Mohammedan, a negro and a smattering of so-called native Americans, including Texas cowboys.