Central
Adams County African Americans of 1854-1945
NHC Speakers Bureau slide presentation
by Rick Wallace
This program focuses on the lives of early African Americans who settled
in Hastings, the issues they faced in their daily lives, and how they were
perceived by the white community.
Additionally, the program focuses on the circumstances faced by the
African American community and the community of Hastings in 1943, when
the Navy announced plans to build an ammunitions plant outside of the town.
The plans included moving 2,000 African Americans to work at the plant,
which caused great consternation among the white citizens of Hastings.
The impact of this history can still be felt today in Hastings and is only
an introduction to a wonderfully rich story.
Back at the Ranch
NHC Video, 58 minutes
This program studies the history and future of the ranching industry in Nebraska and neighboring states. How are the current economic realities at odds with the mythical image of ranching handed down to us by movies, television, and popular literature? What is the plight of the contemporary rancher?
Willa Cather, A Look of Remembrance
NHC 3 audiocassettes, 30 minutes each
This series offers a dramatic portrait of Cather-her life, times, and legacy. The series explores the complex personality of this independent novelist and the pioneer experience that shaped her writing.
Willa Cather and Women's Art
NHC Speakers Bureau slide presentation
by Evelyn Haller
Willa Cather's earliest remembered experience of art occurred when she was a child sitting under quilting frames. In fact, she said that her “first teacher in narration was an old mountain woman in the hills of Virginia ... a woman who could neither read nor write, but who knew the life of the mountain, the folk phrases which no one had written nor could write, but which are the products of years and generations.” This early experience of art as craft, listening to stories and looking at thoughtfully arranged materials of everyday life remained with Cather. She made quilts herself and took pride in them; in her fiction she alludes to quilts, and women's arts of other kinds appear throughout her work. Throughout her life Cather worked in many spaces that recalled the small house she had enjoyed under the quilting frame, among them her attic room in her Red Cloud home, the attic sewing room Isabelle McClung prepared for her in Pittsburgh, and the room where she wrote in Grand Manaan.
Willa Cather: The Writer and the Word
NHC Video, 30 minutes
This program draws from a 1981 national Willa Cather conference in Hastings and Red Cloud. The focus of the conference and this video program is to examine how events and locations in Cather's life related to and became incorporated into her works.
Willa Cather's America
NHC Video, 60 minutes
This program examines Cather's places, characters, the wild American land, and the people on it. It explores Cather's preference for large, empty spaces like the red grass prairie of My Antonia and the sculpted canyons of New Mexico that form the backdrop for Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Willa Cather's “Paul's Case”
NHC Video,
55 minutes
Willa Cather's classic short story. Contemporary version of her famous
short story staring Eric Roberts. This film would be especially good for
high school students.
Willa Cather State Historic Site
Willa Cather, Nebraska's Pulitzer Prizewinning author, spent her formative years in Red Cloud. Many of the scenes and characters in her writings are based on the people, streets, and landscapes Cather encountered here in her youth. Your students may visit six period structures that influenced her writing. These buildings include her childhood home, the Catholic and Episcopal churches, the Garber Bank, the Burlington Depot, and the Pavelka Farmstead, home of Annie Pavelka, the basis for the title character of Cather's most famous novel, My Antonia. Cather's collections of writings and notes are available to researchers at the Willa Cather State Historic Site or at the Nebraska State Historical Society's Library/Archives in Lincoln, 1500 R Street. Tours are available year round; please call ahead to make reservations.
402/746-2653
Mailing and street address:
Willa Cather State Historic Site
326 North Webster
Red Cloud, NE 68970-2550
My Babicka, Antonia
NHC Speakers Bureau presentation for young audiences by Antonette Willa Turner
It was Willa Cather who taught English to the immigrant Annie Pavelka and who later captured the young Czech woman's strength and spirit in My Antonia. Turner, Pavelka's granddaughter, describes the friendship between Cather and her grandmother, tells stories and shows artifacts, and inspires her young audiences to read Cather's works.
Singing Cather's Song
NHC Video, 30 minutes
Historian, activist and preservationist Mildred Bennet spent more than 45 years celebrating the world of Willa Cather. Interviews with Bennet, readings from Cather by Colleen Dewhurst, and location photography combine to tell the story of this energetic woman's career. Contact NHC.
Wright Morris’ Boyhood Impressions
NHC Speakers Bureau slide presentation
By Nancy Johnson
Wright Morris often questions if the images of his boyhood as they appear in his works are real or imaginary. Many of the real images he writes about can be seen in the early 20th century photographs of Central City, Nebraska. In this presentation, these, and recent photographs of artifacts described by Morris, are paired with narrative passages from his works. Images and words create a picture of small town Nebraska life as experienced by Wright Morris.
A Conversation with Wright Morris
NHC Video, 30 minutes
When Morris began to write years after he left the Great Plains, he was surprised to find that he wrote best when the subject was his youth on the Plains, “a world he had completely forgotten.” In this 1980 interview, Morris discusses his novel Plains Song and his “preoccupation with Midwestern sensibilities.”
Wright Morris’ Photographic Strategies
NHC Speakers Bureau slide presentation
by Joseph Wydeven
Wright Morris is both a photographer and writer, but people rarely discuss him as an artist whose sensibility bridges the two media. The premise of this presentation is that Morris might best be appreciated as an artist who uses “photographic strategies” in both his photographs and some of his “difficult” fiction. By looking at both mediums, this richly illustrated program makes his work more accessible and more comprehensible.
Plains Images: The Photography of Wright Morris
NHC Video, 30 minutes
Wright Morris began his career as a photographer shortly after he published his first novel; he realized that what he was attempting to do with words could also be done effectively with pictures. Morris believes that objects and places are saturated with a mystic meaning and sees his role of photographer as that of trying to capture that meaning.
Crossing the Plains on the Oregon Trail
NHC Speakers Bureau slide presentation
by Frederick Luebke
This presentation recounts the experiences of people crossing Nebraska in the 1840s and ‘50s on their way to Oregon and California. Topics include the routes followed by the emigrants, the timing of the journey, daily routines, Indian confrontations (or absence thereof), and health
problems. Slides include maps, contemporary drawings and photographs, and present appearances of sites along the trail.
Danish Religion and Literature on the Plains
NHC Speakers Bureau presentation
by Jacquelynn Sorensen
When the Danish Lutheran Church was transported to America in the late 19th century, it had been a state institution for almost 100 years. It came to America in the form of two dichotomous movements, and strong religious beliefs had a profound effect on the literature of Danish American authors on the plains. This presentation examines and compares the work of four Danish American novelists who represent two prominent factions within the Danish Lutheran Church.
German Folklore and the American Experience
NHC Speakers Bureau Presentation
by Richard Thill
How has the American environment influenced the traditions which German immigrants brought to Nebraska and the Great Plains during the 19th and 20th centuries? The conclusions of this program are based upon extensive detailed analysis of folklore collected from current and former German American residents of Nebraska and neighboring states.
Germans from Russia in Nebraska
NHC Speakers Bureau presentation
by John Scheicher
During the political and religious upheaval of the 18th century, Germans migrated west to the American colonies, and east to the Russian empire of Catherine the Great. Lured by free land, religious and cultural freedom, and exemption from military service, many Germans migrated to Russia, beginning in the 1760’s. After more than 100 years of colonization, these special privileges were threatened, and the Germans from Russia began to emigrate to the plains states of the U.S. and the prairie provinces of Canada. This illustrated program looks at the life these people lived and the contributions they made to Nebraska in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Last of the One-room Schools
NHC Video, 2 hours
(four, 30 minute segments)
This miniseries captures a year in the life
of the seven children of Burr Oak school in Custer County, Nebraska, their teacher,
and the passing of an era in education.
Neligh Mill State Historical Site
The Neligh Mill, complete with its original 1880 equipment, is a surviving reminder of the grist mill architecture and machinery that once dotted Nebraska's landscape. At the site, your students can explore the mill, restored mill office, reconstructed flume and penstock (used to provide water power to the mill), and the remains of the mill dam. At the Neligh Mill, your students can find original files kept by the mill operator and information about other water-powered mills once located throughout Nebraska and the Midwest. Publications available for purchase at the Neligh Mill include the Neligh Mill Cookbook, Water Powered Mills in Nebraska, and a self-guided tour book of the Neligh Mill. Tours are available year round; please call ahead to make reservations.
402/887-4303
Mailing address:
Neligh Mill State Historic Site
P. O. Box 271
Neligh, NE 68756-0271
Street address:
N Street at Wylie Drive, Neligh
The Pawnee
NHC Video, 60 minutes,
This documentary tells the history rich story of the Pawnee culture, its changes in the face of white migration, and the eventual removal to Oklahoma.
People of the Prairie: The Prehistoric Pawnee
NHC Speakers Bureau slide presentation
by Les and Jan Hosick
One thousand years ago in southwest Nebraska there lived small groups of Native Americans known to archaeologists as the Upper Republican Culture. A study of this culture provides us with a look at farming people who lived harmoniously with their environment. They constructed stationary earth lodges along small spring-fed creeks for a period of 500 years. Although this program centers on the construction of an earth lodge, it also expands on this people farming practices, their utilization of the natural environment, and how their close relationship with nature influenced their religious beliefs and daily lives. Included in this exploration of an ancient plains culture are traditional legends, flute music and the sharing of artifacts.
Photographing the American Dream
NHC Speakers Bureau slide presentation
by John Carter
The last half of the 19th century saw an incredible migration to America's Great Plains. Thousands of people left ancestral homelands to answer the siren call of free land. This illustrated presentation explores the social and cultural forces that pushed people onto the plains, and the life that they found when they got here. Images by pioneer photographer Solomon D. Butcher bring us face to face with those who broke the sod and settled the plains in this presentation by the author of an acclaimed study of Butcher's work and times.
The Platte River Road
NHC Video, 60 minutes
The wide Platte valley witnessed many of the major developments and characters in the western American frontier during the struggle for dominance between Native American and Euro-American cultures. In addition, the program explores more recent issues affecting the region: water use and rights, shifting populations and economic development.
Reminiscences of an Oregon Trail Pioneer
NHC Speakers Bureau living history presentation
by Maurine Roller
The Oregon (Overland) Trail linked the East with the West via the “Great American Desert.” Thousands of men and women chronicled their journeys from all that was familiar to their Promised Land. Roller researched over 400 women's diaries and created a composite pioneer woman, Cora Garvey, who left Missouri in 1853 to find a new life in Oregon. Cora, now at journey's end, looks back over the past six months. She reminisces over the incidents she experienced or witnessed: cholera, interactions with Indians, accidents, humorous happenings, and the everyday toil. Cora breaks through many of the myths and stereotypes surrounding the women who traveled the Overland Trail.
Sandhills Album
NHC Video, 60 minutes
An award winning exploration of the life and lifestyles of Northwestern Nebraska residents from frontier times to the 1980s. Images by Solomon Butcher, Depression era FSA photographers, and modern photographers and cinematographers give historical perspective to the subject.
Sandhills Song
NHC Speakers Bureau presentation/demonstration
by Otto Rosfeld
This program combines songs, stories, chants and poems to describe prairie life before easy energy such as electric power and hydraulic pumps entered the lives of settlers on the Great Plains. Beginning with the "last frontier" in the 1870s and extending to the 1950s, this program transports audiences back in time through the eyes of a prairie boy. The original songs that are a part of the program are presented with acoustic instruments, some of them antiques. A collection of old-time hand-powered equipment is used as visual background for the stories and poems.
The Sandhills Story
NHC Video, 60 minutes
Although the Sandhills cover one fourth of the surface area of the state, they remain a mystery in many ways. Early explorers saw the region as an inhospitable desert. In the 1880s the bison were removed and the Native Americans who depended upon them lost their lifestyle. Now the unique Sandhills family ranch culture, one connected to the needs of the cattle and to the fragility of the soil, grass and water, is facing pressure to adapt and survive.
Voices from the New Land: Danish Emigration in Nebraska
NHC Speakers Bureau slide presentation
by John Mark Nielsen
Danish emigration to Nebraska is explored through dramatic readings from immigrant letters, journals and diaries, as well as slides of old photographs, drawings, and scenes of present day Denmark and Nebraska. The presentation focuses on the stories of individuals-what motivated them to emigrate, how they struggled with the land and faced the hardships of drought and the deaths of loved ones. Nielsen also describes how they experienced the joys of community and the satisfaction of realizing their dreams.
Printed Central Materials
Agribusiness
NSHS Nebraska
Trailblazers Series
The text covers some of the changes in agribusiness during the twentieth
century. Pictured are a fertilizer plant, incubator, distillery, flour
mill, stock yards, sugar beet harvesting, coop creamery, silos, tractors,
and the College of Agriculture as they appeared in the past. Also pictured
are combines, pivot irrigation, and a mounted sprayer. The coloring page
shows a farmer's desk with a computer and other equipment needed in today's
agribusiness. The activity page contains information
and a quiz about corn.
Fort Kearny
NSHS Educational Leaflet
Eight pages, printed booklet, illustrations, bibliography. History of the
important army post on Oregon Trail and Pony Express routes. . . . . . . . $.50
Native Americans
NSHS Nebraska Trailblazers Series
Brief history of Pawnee Scouts. Map shows location of Indian tribes in Nebraska in mid l800s. Famous Native Americans from Nebraska, four types of homes, clothing, and everyday objects are illustrated. Coloring page is interior of round earthlodge. Activity is a crossword puzzle about Indian tribes.
A Nebraska Childhood
NSHS Nebraska Trailblazers Series
The text and pictures give an overview of childhood from pioneer times through the 1930. Children's experiences are shown in several pictures including a family by their sod house. Pictured is the York Theater with a ten cent double feature. Also included are an old Orphan Annie comic strip, instructions for toys made out of cork, a Boy-Kraft magazine ad, and drawings of toys from the 1880 through the 1950. The activity is a crossword puzzle with a fun and games theme.
Neligh Mill State Historic Site: A Self-Guided Tour
by Kent E. Martin, 1997, 26 pp., $2.50 NSHS
A self-guided tour with detailed description of the mill's features and the history of Neligh mill. Includes brief biographies of mill owners and workers. The guide also features maps of each floor of the mill noting the different stages of machinery for processing flour, and maps of the mill site over the years.
Pawnee Life
NSHS History in the Making Series
This series of projects was developed specifically for use before touring The First Nebraskans exhibit. The primary objective is for students to compare their lives to Pawnee lives and realize the similarities as well as the differences. The second objective is to create games wherein students undertake the decision making and problem solving that the Pawnee confronted while living in Nebraska.
Location, Location, Location Students learn about the design of homes and villages in the Pawnee Nation. Students compare homes and neighborhoods of today to Pawnee earthlodges and villages of the mid-1860s by drawing sketches of these different living arrangements side by side.
Planning for the Summer Hunt In teams of five, students prepare for the summer hunt. “Jobs” include packing a travois by cutting out the different items to be included and arranging them on a drawing of a travois, figuring out how much food to take, making “dog-sacks” and dried pumpkin out of brown paper sacks, figuring out the best hunting route, and making decisions about infringing on another tribe's hunting lands.
The Pawnee
NSHS Educational Leaflet
Seven pages, photocopied, bibliography. Summary of history and
culture of this important Plains Indian tribe. Religion, dress, tools, and
warfare are discussed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $.20
Town Builders
NSHS Nebraska Trailblazers Series
Transportation by river or railroad and available natural resources largely determined the location of towns in early Nebraska. Towns were also built up around forts, road ranches, county seats, and industrial sites. Early views of Nebraska towns, including Center, Hebron, Gibbon, Kearney, Sidney, Nebraska City, and Lincoln are pictured. The coloring page features a small city's Fourth of July celebration about 1905. The activity is a quiz about the names of Nebraska towns. For this activity you will need a Nebraska road map.
For ordering, contact information, and further links, please go to the
information page.
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Last Modified December 1998
Webmaster: R.L.D. Watson
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