Roger Welsch – författare

When he was out playing Indian, enacting Hollywood-inspired scenarios, it never occurred to the child Roger Welsch that the little girl sitting next to him in school was Indian. A lifetime of learning later, Welsch's enthusiasm is undimmed, if somewhat more enlightened. In Embracing Fry Bread Welsch tells the story of his lifelong relationship with Native American culture, which, beginning in earnest with the study of linguistic practices of the Omaha tribe during a college anthropology course, resulted in his becoming an adopted member and kin of both the Omaha and the Pawnee tribes. With requisite humility and a healthy dose of humor, Welsch describes his long pilgrimage through Native life, from lessons in the vagaries of "Indian time" and the difficulties of reservation life, to the joy of being allowed to participate in special ceremonies and developing a deep and lasting love of fry bread. Navigating another culture is a complicated task, and Welsch shares his mistakes and successes with engaging candor. Through his serendipitous wanderings, he finds that the more he learns about Native culture the more he learns about himself—and about a way of life whose allure offers true insight into indigenous America.

Roger Welsch is a fierce fan of Nebraska—not just the football team, or the state's famous beef, or its endless sky, or its ferocious and ferociously unpredictable weather, but the whole thing. His license plate says CAPT NEB, and he means it. Welsch loves Nebraska as the heart of America's Great Plains. His perception of the state is not always conventional—occasionally it's even abrasive—but he's thought a lot about this place some call "Fly-Over Country" or "The Middle of Nowhere" or even "The End of the Earth." And what he has to say about it makes interesting reading not just for natives but certainly also for outsiders, for those who love the place and those who would rather travel through hell than make another drive across Nebraska's endless miles.

In 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the Federal Writers' Project (FWP). Out-of-work teachers, writers, and scholars fanned out across the country to collect and document local lore. This book reveals the remarkable results of the FWP in Wyoming at a time when it was still possible to interview Civil War veterans and former slaves, homesteaders and Oregon Trail migrants, soldiers of the Great War and Native Americans who remembered Little Big Horn. The work of the FWP in Wyoming, collected and edited here for the first time, comprises a rich repository of folklore and history and a firsthand look at the Old West in the process of becoming the new American frontier. Wyoming Folklore presents the legends, local and oral histories, and pioneer stories that defined the state in the early twentieth century.

Forty years ago, while paging through a book sent as an unexpected gift from a friend, Roger Welsch came across a curious reference to stones that were round, "like the sun and moon." According to Tatonka-ohitka, Brave Buffalo (Sioux), these stones were sacred. "I make my request of the stones and they are my intercessors," Brave Buffalo explained. Moments later, another friend appeared at Welsch's door bearing yet another unusual gift: a perfectly round white stone found on top of a mesa in Colorado. So began Welsch's lesson from stones, gifts that always presented themselves unexpectedly: during a walk, set aside in an antique store, and in the mail from complete strangers.  The Reluctant Pilgrim shares a skeptic's spiritual journey from his Lutheran upbringing to the Native sensibilities of his adoptive families in both the Omaha and Pawnee tribes. Beginning with those round stones, increasing encounters during his life prompted Welsch to confront a new way of learning and teaching as he was drawn inexorably into another world. Confronting mainstream contemporary culture's tendency to dismiss the magical, mystical, and unexplained, Welsch shares his personal experiences and celebrates the fact that even in our scientific world, "Something Is Going On," just beyond our ken.

2017 Nebraska Book Award Nonfiction: FolkloreOne day Roger Welsch ventured to ask his father a delicate personal question: “Why am I an only child?” His father’s answer is one of many examples of the delightful and laughter-inducing ribald tales Welsch has compiled from a lifetime of listening to and sharing the folklore of the Plains. More narrative than simple jokes, and the product of multiple retellings, these coarse tales were even delivered by such prudish sources as Welsch’s stern and fearsome German great-aunts. Speaking of cucumbers and sausages in a toast to a newly married couple, the prim and proper women of Welsch’s memory voice the obscene and unspeakable in stories fit for general company. Why I’m an Only Child and Other Slightly Naughty Plains Folktales is Welsch’s celebration of the gentle and evocative bits of humor reflecting the personality of the people of the Plains.

"More than corn grows tall on the American Plains. Here for the delectation of amateur folklorists is a collection of country whoppers from the frontier of Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa—funny and fantastic yarns and anecdotes of pioneer vintage that belie the erroneous notion that the men and women who settled the Plains were 'grimly serious' forerunners of Grant Wood's farming couple."—Publishers Weekly

Folklore tells us something about almost every aspect of the life of the people. This rich and entertaining collection of Nebraska pioneer folklore, taken largely from the Nebraska Folklore Pamphlets issued by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s, is intended first and foremost for the general reader, for the people whose heritage it is. Songs of trail and prairie and of the Farmers' Alliance, white man's yarns and Indian tales, pioneer Nebraska folk customs, sayings, proverbs, beliefs, children's games, cooking, and cures—these "wondrously entertaining kaleidoscopic reflections of the people and environment that were inspirations of the classic literature of Mari Sandoz and Willa Cather—to name two—could be a model for Americana collectors in other states to emulate. . . . A treasury indeed."—King Features Syndicate "Parade of Books."

Were our forefathers liars? "You bet they were," says Roger Welsch, "and damned fine ones at that." The proof is in Catfish at the Pump, a collection of the kind of humor that softened the hardships of pioneering on the Great Plains. From yellowed newspapers, magazines, and forgotten Nebraska Federal Writers' Project files, the well-known folklorist and humorist Roger Welsch has produced a book to be treasured. Here are jokes, anecdotes, legends, tall tales, and lugubriously funny poems about the things that preoccupied the pioneer plainsman: weather extremes; soil quality; food and whiskey; an arkload of animals, including grasshoppers, bed bugs, hoop snakes, the ubiquitous mule, and some mighty big fish; and even sickness and the poverty that would inspire black laughter again in the Great Depression. Catfish at the Pump proves abundantly that the art of story telling was practiced diligently by our plains ancestors. Roger Welsch, who brought out Shingling the Fog and Other Plains Lies in 1972 (reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press in 1980), now issues this "book about lies and liars," knowing full well that "underlying the pioneer sense of humor is a profound respect for truth."

Roger and Linda Welsch matched references from Willa Cather's writing with recipes they collected from Cather family recipe files, from other period cookbooks, and from old-time ethnic cooks still living in the Bohemian tradition. Cather's Kitchens comes as close as possible to the precise recipes Cather had in mind and memory as she wrote.

Plains folklorist Roger L. Welsch has edited a lively collection of stories by some master yarnspinners—those old-time traveling horse traders. Told to Federal Writers' Project fieldworkers in the 1930s, these stories cover the span of horse trading: human and equine trickery, orneriness, debility—and generosity.

The Turtle Creek band of the fictional Nehawka Indians wages a battle for the return of their sacred Sky Bundle, a medicine pouch containing artifacts. It reposes under glass in an eastern museum at the beginning of Touching the Fire. Seven interlinked stories, beginning with a court battle in the year 2001 and going far back in time to the origin of the Bundle and the first Nehawka village on the Great Plains, reveal the richness and depth of Indian cultural heritage. Touching the Fire is multilayered—sad, humorous, and always informative.

Roger Welsch did what many Americans only dream of doing. While still in his professional prime, the folklorist and humorist quit a tenured professorship and headed toward the hinterland. Resettled in the open heart of Nebraska with his wife, Welsch proceeded to learn how to live. It's Not the End of the Earth, but You Can See It from Here is, in his own words, "a celebration" of his "rural education." These twenty-eight tales of the Great Plains convey in familiar Welschian style "the importance, charm, beauty, and value of the typical." They describe the wisdom that Welsch's new-found teachers share with him. From everyday country people, he learns the fine arts of relaxing, using his noggin, trusting his instincts, and laughing a lot more, while Omaha Indian friends teach him the most profound lessons of all.