The Way to Independence: Memories of a Hidatsa Indian Family, 1840-1920

by Carolyn Ives Gilman, Mary Jane Schneider

A unique exploration of the Hidatsa people, material culture, spirituality, and adaptations, through the stories of respected elders from more than a century ago.In the 1910s, in the small Hidatsa settlement of Independence, North Dakota, Buffalo Bird Woman, her brother Wolf Chief, and her son Goodbird welcomed anthropologist Gilbert Wilson into their homes and shared stories and memories of Hidatsa life and traditions reaching back more than 65 years. With Goodbird acting as interpreter, Wilson carefully recorded their words, took photographs, and collected artifacts. Together, these stories and images provide a rare glimpse into the Hidatsa people and culture.The Way to Independence is a powerful and personal description of the Hidatsa people’s journey from a traditional clan-oriented society of the 1840s to the industrialized, individualistic world of twentieth-century America. Through the words of Buffalo Bird Woman and her family, and using hundreds of stunning photographs of artworks and artifacts, this book tells the story of the tribe. Authors Carolyn Gilman and Mary Jane Schneider provide both text and illustrations to explore the material culture, spirituality, and adaptations of the Hidatsa people during a time of tremendous change.Throughout these years, the Hidatsa coped with these radical changes, but they never surrendered to them. They adopted many white political and religious institutions, but those institutions took on a Hidatsa flavor; similarly, they used the tools of the industrialized world, but they produced Hidatsa things with them. Thus the people found their way to a new kind of independence.In a separate section of the book, several experts on the Hidatsa contribute essays discussing the tribe’s origins, religion, and natural environment, as well as the Hidatsa studies of Gilbert Wilson and his brother Frederick. This book, first published to accompany a major exhibition at the Minnesota Historical Society, continues to provide a vital story of a resilient and creative people.

371 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1987

About the author

Carolyn Ives Gilman has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for almost twenty years. Her first novel, Halfway Human, published by Avon/Eos in 1998, was called “one of the most compelling explorations of gender and power in recent SF” by Locus magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies such as F&SF, Bending the Landscape, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, and others. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, Russian, German, Czech and Romanian. In 1992 she was a finalist for the Nebula Award for her novella, “The Honeycrafters.”

In her professional career, Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history. Her most recent nonfiction book, Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, was published in 2003 by Smithsonian Books. She has been a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and Monticello, and has been interviewed on All Things Considered (NPR), Talk of the Nation (NPR), History Detectives (PBS), and the History Channel.

Carolyn Ives Gilman lives in St. Louis and works for the Missouri Historical Society as a historian and museum curator.