"History of Mari Sandoz"

When she died in 1966, Mari Sandoz was already recognized as a Nebraska literary treasure.  Indeed, our national literary heritage is richer because of her    writings. Our sense of ourselves as Nebraskans is more defined because of her descriptions of the Nebraska landscape and the people who made this wide-open country their home. 

She wrote 23 books and each one of them is a testament to her skills.  The two books most readily mentioned in any discussion regarding Sandoz are “Old Jules” and “Slogum House”. 

I’ve heard people say that you aren’t truly a Nebraskan until you have read “Old Jules”.  I think that’s a fair assessment.  I know that I hadn’t identified myself as a Nebraskan until, some ten years after moving to the state, I read Old Jules.

Written about her father after he had died, “Old Jules” pays tribute to this Sandhills settler as well as washes away any sentimentality, to reveal Jules as a tyrannical and brutal man, who dominated his wife and children while he studied horticulture and corresponded with agricultural professors at the University. Mari was roundly criticized by many of her readers for her frank and unflattering portrait of her father.

Recently, I read “Slogum House”.  I had been putting off reading this book.  I thought I would have difficultly with it because of its treatment of the settlement of the Sandhills. Within a few pages, I was engrossed in the beauty of Mari’s descriptions.  A painter with words, she lets the reader’s imagination creates the images she describes:  “Before the sun broke the far plain into a shimmer of head dance, Libby, the eldest daughter of the Slogums, climbed to the crest of the hogback, her black cat running like a dog before her.  Tall in her blowing skirts of yellow gingham, the girl looked down upon the empty trails of the plain spread before her.”

Published in 1937, “Slogum House” is a study of greed and man’s willingness to savage others for material gain. Around the turn of the century, Gulla Slogum, the matriarch, brought her family west from Ohio to make her fortune in land and cattle.  She settled her family of seven children and pliant husband in the Sandhills just as the land was being taken from the ranchers and cattle drovers and sold by the government to the Kincaiders at $14 a square mile.  Through bullying and threats, she turned her two oldest sons into thieves and rustlers and two of her daughters into prostitutes to further her desire for more land and cattle.  The ranch house had been built with “midnight lumber”-- timber stolen from other settler’s property in the dark of night.  The windmill and the watering trough were both moved from other properties without the benefit of a sale.  To protect her possessions—including her family—she conspired to intimidation, mutilation and murder.  

When first published, the book was banned in most libraries because of the strong language and vivid descriptions of the lives lead by the settlers, cattlemen, and outlaws. Nebraskans were particularly indigent over this unflattering portrayal of their forbearers.   During World War II, the U.S. government refused to allow the book to be included in the library collections sent to the servicemen stationed overseas. 

In writing this dark story, Sandoz used a “westernized” English with clipped words and old-fashioned idioms. She fought with the publisher’s editor as he and his staff wanted to “civilize” the phraseology and conventionalize the grammar.  Earlier, Sandoz had mistakenly relinquished her artistic rights with “Old Jules” and let the editors have their way.  She wouldn’t let the “Slogum House” manuscript be compromised and we, as Nebraskans, can be thankful for that.