Center for Western Studies – förlag

Along the rugged 360-mile border between North Dakota and South Dakota there once stood 720 quartzite markers, cut from the quarries near Sioux Falls and placed there in 1891 and 1892 by United States surveyor Charles H. Bates and his crew. In "The Quartzite Border," Dr. Gordon L. Iseminger of the University of North Dakota recounts, for the first time, the intriguing story behind the surveying and marking of one of the nation's longest state borders.

Based on the author's exhaustive research of Bates' survey notes and his correspondence with the Interior Department and the General Land Office, "The Quartzite Border" reveals the political machinations of U.S. Senator Richard F. Pettigrew, who attempted to prevent Bates from securing the contract to make the survey, and afterwards sought to discredit his work. Using photographs, maps, and drawings, Dr. Iseminger provides the historical context of the survey, giving special attention to the struggle for statehood, the science of surveying, the stone industry in Sioux Falls, steamboating on the Missouri River, and life in the small towns that bordered the seventh standard parallel two years after statehood.

"The Black Hills of South Dakota is a forested island in the grassland ocean of the Great Plains. This region is unique from its geology to the distinctive ecosystems within its border. Froiland's book does a superb job of introducing a student of natural history to the Black Hills. . . . Of particular interest is his writings about the Sioux. . . . The biological information section includes the most comprehensive material in the book." - from a review in Great Plains Research (2018)

Extensively researched at the National Archives and South Dakota State Archives, Fort Sisseton recounts the military history of the post, including the activities of the Frontier Indian Scout Force and the midnight ride of Samuel J. Brown in 1866 to warn of an impending attack.

In Little Business on the Prairie: Entrepreneurship, Prosperity, and Challenge in South Dakota, economic historian Robert Wright reviews the state's economic history through the lenses of its public policies, politics, and institutions of governance.

The book demonstrates that an economy that suffers from palpable disadvantages, like long distance from major markets and low population density, will still thrive if it is governed efficiently. In other words, crucial public goods like education, infrastructure, and justice should be provided at minimal cost, and entrepreneurs should not be burdened with excessive regulatory and tax expense.

Economic performance suffers when governance is poor and public goods are provided at an unnecessarily high cost. This Wright shows by comparing South Dakota to other states and by examining the economies of the state's Indian reservations. Public goods provisions on reservations is spotty and generally very poor and, not surprising, reservation economies lag far behind that of the state even though individual Native Americans have shown considerable entrepreneurial skill.

Little Business on the Prairie concludes with Wright's prescription for confronting the economic and governance challenges that lie ahead for South Dakota.

What Herbert Krause brings to telling the stories of the birds of the Great Plains is his love of the rich variety of wildlife here – especially its sheer profusion – and his novelist's ability to give every individual bird he visits its own character and personality.

For Johnny Black, the young man we meet in Herbert Krause's classic Minnesota farm novel The Thresher, his dream of becoming a member of a steam-powered threshing crew has come true. As fireman, he builds the fire that generates the steam and blows the whistle to wake up the rest of the crew.

As writer Patrick Hicks explains in his introduction, commissioned especially for this edition, Johnny's ambitions far exceed mastering this new technology, and what he is willing to sacrifice to achieve them is the driving force of the novel.

For three years, beginning in 1906, the mysterious death of servant girl Agnes Polreis in Sioux Falls, followed by the trials of Emma Kaufmann, gripped the nation's attention. Lurid reports of abuse and even torture in the heartland appeared with regularity in newspapers from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.

After less than six months in the employ of Emma Kaufmann and her husband, a wealthy and influential partner in a brewery business in the region's largest city, sixteen-year-old Agnes Polreis, born in Austria-Hungary, was returned to her parents' farm, dead, her emaciated body showing marks of extreme violence—49 wounds in all, some of them gangrenous. An instance of "diabolical cruelty," editorialized one newspaper.

But more repulsive than the manner of Agnes' death were the outrageous antics of the attorneys, the shifting testimony of witnesses, and the sensationalizing newspaper coverage. A poor immigrant girl with faltering English, Agnes was abandoned by physicians and exploited by the legal and newspaper professions. Her death and the subsequent trials caused the downfall of a United States senator, but brought no justice for Agnes Polreis.

Following the success of the Center for Western Studies' first foray into river histories, Heartland River: A Cultural and Environmental History of the Big Sioux River (second printing, 2025), the CWS is publishing The Missouri, America's Longest River in 2026 as part of its commemoration of America's 250th anniversary. The book features chapters by thirty-five historians, scientists, and writers exploring the natural and human history of the waterway that defines the region that is the focus of the Center for Western Studies—South Dakota and the six surrounding states.

Chapter contributors represent the following institutions: Augustana University, College of New Jersey, Helena College, Loras College, Loyola University, Midland University, Minnesota State University–Mankato, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, Northern Illinois University, Ohio State University, Oklahoma City University, Providence College, South Dakota School of Mines, South Dakota State Historical Society, South Dakota State University, State Historical Society of North Dakota, University of California–Riverside, University of Colorado–Boulder, University of Kansas, University of Kansas–Monticello, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of South Dakota, and the United States Geological Survey.

Pekka Hämäläinen, Rhodes Professor of History at the University of Oxford, leads off this collection of new perspectives on South Dakota history with a stunning interpretation of Lakota power in the Northern Plains. With their mastery of the horse, the Lakota mounted "an expansive and constantly shapeshifting Indigenous regime that controlled human fates in the North American interior for generations," writes Hämäläinen.

The essays that follow take up a variety of topics on South Dakota history:

Borders, by Thomas D. Isern

Railroads, by H. Roger Grant

Weather, by Christopher R. Laingen

West River Country, by John Henris

Wildlife and Parks, by Frank Van Nuys

Radical Tradition, by Jeffrey A. Johnson

German-Language Press, by Samantha M. Litty

Changing Foodways, by Sara Egge

Sports, by Paul Higbee

Hunting and Fishing, by Lance Nixon

American Indian Movement, by Carson Walker

Movies, by Jon D. Schaff