Rooted in the Plains

Nicole Blackstock

Rooted in the Plains is a podcast about the people, places and moments that shaped the Great Plains. We'll dig into stories of resilience, curiosity and courage. These are the voices that whisper through the wind and are written in the dirt beneath our feet. This summer, we're taking it to the field. New episodes dropping all season,  subscribe so you don't miss the adventure.

  1. May 27 ·  Bonus

    We Are Still Here...

    Summer Season Episode 2 Last week, we left you on a bluff above the Missouri River. November 1819. A Nebraska winter is closing in. Something about to go very, very wrong.  In Part 2 of our Fort Atkinson series, we hear the story from the inside. Through the journal entries of our soldier stationed at the fort in the winter of 1819–1820, we follow the crisis as it unfolds and what would take 157 men before spring arrived.  The details are real. They come straight from the historical record.  We also look at what came next, how the soldiers who survived that winter went on to become the first large-scale farmers west of the Missouri River, and why Fort Atkinson is a place worth standing on. For photos, maps, and a behind the scenes look at what we’re getting into this summer, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Plan Your Visit Fort Atkinson's next living history weekend is June 6th and 7th, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. Free with a Nebraska State Park entry permit. Fort Atkinson State Historical Park — Nebraska Game & Parks Friends of Fort Atkinson — fortatkinsononline.org Want to Learn More Diary of James Kennerly, 1823–1826. Missouri Historical Society Collections Vol. VI, No. 1 (1928). Johnson, Sally A. “The Sixth’s Elysian Fields: Fort Atkinson on the Council Bluffs.” Nebraska History 40 (1959): 1–38. Levine, Victor E. “Scurvy in Nebraska: The Epidemic of Scurvy at Cantonment Missouri, Nebraska, 1819–1820.” Journal of Nutrition, January 1955. Nichols, Roger L. “Soldiers as Farmers: Army Agriculture in the Missouri Valley, 1818–1827.” Reals, William J. “Scurvy at Fort Atkinson, 1819–1820.” Nebraska History. Wesley, Edgar Bruce. “Life at a Frontier Post: Fort Atkinson, 1823–1826.” Journal of the American Military Institute Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter 1939): 202–209.

    12 min

  2. May 20 ·  Bonus

    The Fort at the Edge of the World

    Summer Season Episode 1 On a bluff above the Missouri River, 200 miles from the nearest American settlement, the United States built its largest military post in 1819. Nearly a thousand people called it home: soldiers, officers, families. They were sent to project American power into the frontier, hold back British fur traders, and keep the peace with the surrounding nations: the Pawnee, the Omaha, the Sioux, the Arikara.  In this episode, we step inside the walls with Andrew, a living history re-enactor and Friend of Fort Atkinson, to get a feel for what daily life actually looked like. The rations. The whiskey. The discipline, the isolation, and the particular strangeness of being a soldier at the edge of the known American world. And we leave you with a question. It was November 1819. A Nebraska winter is closing in. Something was about to go very, very wrong. Find out next week (May 27, 2026) in Part 2.  For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, and a behind the scenes look at what we’re getting into this summer, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Plan Your Visit Fort Atkinson's next living history weekend is June 6th and 7th, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. Free with a Nebraska State Park entry permit. Fort Atkinson State Historical Park — Nebraska Game & Parks Friends of Fort Atkinson — fortatkinsononline.org Want to Learn More Johnson, Sally A. “The Sixth’s Elysian Fields: Fort Atkinson on the Council Bluffs.” Nebraska History 40 (1959): 1–38. Wesley, Edgar Bruce. “Life at a Frontier Post: Fort Atkinson, 1823–1826.” Journal of the American Military Institute Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter 1939): 202–209. Diary of James Kennerly, 1823–1826. Missouri Historical Society Collections Vol. VI, No. 1 (1928).

    12 min

  3. May 6

    Deep Roots, Wide Open Future

    Two years ago, I took a walk around a lake. The tallgrass was moving in the wind, and if I was lucky, a red-winged blackbird. That's where this podcast started. In this episode, I close out Season 2, eight episodes across the Great Plains, from South Dakota to Oklahoma and look ahead to what's coming next. I share a bit about how Rooted in the Plains got started and where I want to see it go. Including something I'm really excited about for this fall. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to get involved? Partner with the podcast: rootedintheplains@outlook.com or Instagram @rootedintheplainsShare your Plains story: My Plains Story

    6 min

  4. Apr 15

    Off the Record

    Every episode leaves something on the research desk. The details that didn't quite fit. The rabbit holes that led somewhere unexpected. The questions the records wouldn't answer. Today we're opening the files. In this episode, we go back to three stories from Season 2, the ones I couldn't stop thinking about long after the microphone was off. A Nebraska son hired to evaluate the Carnegie library program, who told an uncomfortable truth and watched his report disappear. A sacred building in Deadwood's Chinatown that burned under suspicious circumstances, and the case that was never closed. And two researchers documenting the same Indigenous plant knowledge at the same time, through completely different methods, producing completely different records. Three episodes. Three things I couldn't let go of. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? Erickson, David L. "Melvin Randolph Gilmore, Incipient Cultural Ecologist: A Biographic Analysis." Master's thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1971. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/opentheses/60/Fosha, Rose Estep, and Christopher Leatherman. "The Chinese Experience in Deadwood, South Dakota." Historical Archaeology 42, no. 3 (2008): 97–110. Latham, Joyce M. "Clergy of the Mind: Alvin S. Johnson, William S. Learned, the Carnegie Corporations, and the American Library Association." The Library Quarterly 80, no. 3 (July 2010): 249–265.Pollak, Oliver B. A State of Readers: Nebraska's Carnegie Libraries. Lincoln, NE: J & L Lee Co., 2005, pp. 165–172. Waheenee, Edward Goodbird, and Gilbert Livingstone Wilson. Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987. Wong, Edith C., Eileen French, and Rose Estep Fosha. "Deadwood's Pioneer Merchant: Wong Fee Lee and His Wing Tsue Bazaar." South Dakota History 39, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 283–335.

    13 min

  5. Apr 1

    What the Prairie Knew

    Before the plow broke the prairie, the prairie was already a library. Every plant had a name. Every name carried a use. Every use carried a story. In this episode, we explore the deep relationship between the peoples of the Great Plains and the plant life they had cultivated, tended, and understood for centuries. From the sacred cottonwood along the river bottoms to the purple coneflower in your supplement aisle, the knowledge was always there, built over generations of watching, experimenting, teaching, and remembering. And when that world began to fracture, a few people recognized what was at stake. Some of what they gathered survives. And the work didn't stop there. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? Erickson, David L. "Melvin Randolph Gilmore, Incipient Cultural Ecologist: A Biographic Analysis." Master's thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1971. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/opentheses/60/Gilmore, Melvin R. Uses of plants by the Indians of the Missouri River region. Washington, Govt. print. off, 1919. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/20009591/Kindscher, Kelly, Loren Yellow Bird, Michael Yellow Bird, and Logan Sutton. Sahnish (Arikara) Ethnobotany. Tacoma: Society of Ethnobiology, 2020. https://ethnobiology.org/publications/contributions/sahnish-arikara-ethnobotanyOther Kindscher books and publications: https://kindscher.ku.edu/publications

    11 min

  6. Mar 18

    A Line in the Sod: Oklahoma Land Runs

    Note: This episode opens with a gunshot sound effect.  On September 16, 1893, a gun was fired at noon, and 100,000 people surged across the Oklahoma plains in the largest land run in American history. Within 2 hours, 6.5 million acres were claimed. Cities appeared overnight. The frontier, they said, was finally settled. But a young Tonkawa woman was already there, lying flat in the grass at the edge of her family's field, feeling the hoofbeats in her teeth. In this episode, we follow the process that made the Oklahoma Land Runs possible, the Dawes Act of 1887, the Jerome Commission's hard bargaining and deception, and the quiet arithmetic of tribal land ceded for cents on the dollar. We hear from Oklahoma's first territorial governor, who wrote frankly about the chaos and the cost. And we sit with the Tonkawa, who kept their allotments, watched a town spring up on their former land, and watched it be named after them. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? Berthrong, Donald J. "Legacies of the Dawes Act: Bureaucrats and Land Thieves at the Cheyenne-Arapaho Agencies of Oklahoma." Arizona and the West 21, no. 4 (1979): 335–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40168884 Da', Laura. "Passing the Frontier." Prairie Schooner 96, no. 1 (2022): 79–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45474106 Faulk, Odie B. "Land of the Fair God and the Run for Land." History News 44, no. 5 (1989): 7–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42652022 Hasskarl, Robert A. "The Culture and History of the Tonkawa Indians." Plains Anthropologist 7, no. 18 (1962): 217–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25666463 Hefley, Maurice. A Pioneer at the Land Openings in Oklahoma. Summer 1962. Oklahoma Historical Society. https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc2123819/ Steele, George W. Report of the Governor of Oklahoma to the Secretary of the Interior, 1891. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891. https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6155&context=indianserialset

    15 min

  7. Mar 4

    What Couldn't Be Erased: Deadwood's Chinatown

    In 1876, Chinese immigrants arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota, building restaurants, laundries, medical practices, and a temple that smelled of incense from a block away. By 1880, there were over 200 - possibly 400. But then the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 changed everything. In this episode, we explore how a thriving community faced systematic legal persecution - yet refused to disappear. We'll meet Wong Fee Lee, who became the first Chinese property owner in Deadwood in 1877, and Judge Granville Bennett, who made sure Chinese clients got fair trials even as the Supreme Court ruled that they had no constitutional protections. We'll witness elaborate public funerals where hundreds of white residents watched, and follow Ah Sam as he sues for his wages and wins. Then we go underground: archaeologists discover Feature 17, a ritual burial interrupted mid-ceremony during the worst years of persecution, and a ceremonial burner built in 1908 that was used for decades - evidence that dignity survived. By 1931, the last Chinese resident left Deadwood. But in 2025, South Dakota declared Wong Fee Lee Day, unveiled a statue, and 69 descendants gathered to celebrate. For photos, maps and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? Chen, Joyce J. "The Impact of Skill-Based Immigration Restrictions: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882." Journal of Human Resources (2015).Fosha, Rose Estep, and Christopher Leatherman. "The Chinese Experience in Deadwood, South Dakota." Historical Archaeology 42, no. 3 (2008): 97–110. Garrison, William Lloyd. "Chinese Exclusion." The Advocate of Peace 64, no. 2Maher, Jim. Facebook post about Wong Fee Lee Day statue unveiling. June 26, 2025. Accessed February 16, 2026. https://www.facebook.com/jimmahersculpture/posts/1565495491474042/.“THE AMENDMENT OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT.” American Advocate of Peace (1892-1893) 55, no. 12 (1893): 277–78. "The Supreme Court and the Chinese Exclusion Act." American Advocate of Peace 55, no. 6 (1893): 130–31.Sanborn Fire Insurance Company. Insurance Maps of Deadwood, South Dakota. New York: Sanborn Map Company, 1891, 1897, 1909, 1915.Wong, Edith C., Eileen French, and Rose Estep Fosha. "Deadwood's Pioneer Merchant: Wong Fee Lee and His Wing Tsue Bazaar." South Dakota History 39, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 283–322.

    14 min

  8. Feb 18

    Temples of Literature: Nebraska's Carnegie Libraries

    Between 1901 and 1922, Andrew Carnegie funded 69 libraries across Nebraska, giving the state the second-highest per capita rate of Carnegie libraries in the nation. But why Nebraska? In this episode, we explore how women's clubs, a newly formed state Library Commission, and Carnegie's millions transformed Nebraska from having just 26 libraries to over 120 in two decades. We'll meet Belle Stoughtenborough, who traveled the state preaching "the library way," and Edna Bullock, who lobbied the legislature relentlessly until Nebraska established its Library Commission in 1901, at exactly the right moment. Then we visit two libraries: Broken Bow, where the Ladies Library Association kept books circulating for 30 years before finally getting their "temple of literature," and Chadron, where librarian Elizabeth O'Linn Smith served soldiers at Fort Robinson during World War I, declaring, "I will go wherever I am needed." As we continue building our Rooted in the Plains community, today, we open the doors to our Carnegie Library, right next to the opera house. For photos of Nebraska's Carnegie libraries, past and present, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? Bobinski, George S. "Carnegie Libraries: Their History and Impact on American Public Library Development." Library Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1969): 390-405.Kevane, Michael, and William A. Sundstrom. "The Development of Public Libraries in the United States, 1870-1930: A Quantitative Assessment." Information & Culture 49, no. 2 (2014): 117–44. Mickelson, Peter. "American Society and the Public Library in the Thought of Andrew Carnegie." The Journal of Library History 10, no. 2 (1975): 117–38. Pollak, Oliver B. A State of Readers: Nebraska's Carnegie Libraries. Lincoln, NE: J & L Lee Co, 2005."List of Carnegie Libraries in Nebraska." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_Nebraska

    18 min
See All (21)

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Rooted in the Plains is a podcast about the people, places and moments that shaped the Great Plains. We'll dig into stories of resilience, curiosity and courage. These are the voices that whisper through the wind and are written in the dirt beneath our feet. This summer, we're taking it to the field. New episodes dropping all season,  subscribe so you don't miss the adventure.

Information

  • Creator
    Nicole Blackstock
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Rooted in the Plains
  • Show Website
    Rooted in the Plains

You Might Also Like