Forthcoming Issue

Volume 32: Summer 2009

William E. Foley. "Murder on the Santa Fe Trail: The United States v See See Sah Mah and Escotah."

President Millard Fillmore's decision to commute the death sentence of See See Sah Mah, a Sac Indian convicted of murdering trader Norris Colburn on the Santa Fe Trail in 1847 is rooted in the larger story of Indian-white relations and the U.S. government's attempts to subject native people to the dictates of an American legal system that differed markedly from the customary ways of Indian law. St. Louis attorneys B. Gratz Brown and Francis Preston Blair, Jr., represented See See Sah Mah and his co-defendant Escotah in an 1851 trial where greed, bribery, perjury, language barriers, anti-Indian prejudice, and an unsympathetic judge weighed in to tip the balance of justice against their clients. The influential lawyers succeeded in having Escotah's conviction overturned and persuaded the American president to intervene on behalf of the mentally impaired See See Sah Mah. But notwithstanding those extraordinary actions, the Sac Indian's tragic life ended in a Missouri prison, and the identity of Colburn's killer remained in doubt.

Alan F. Bearman and Jennifer L. Mills, "Charles M. Sheldon and Charles F. Parham: Adapting Christianity to the Challenges of the American West."

Two of America's most important contributions to the history of Christianity-the Social Gospel and Pentecostalism-have significant early ties to Topeka through the work of two of its early residents, Charles Monroe Sheldon and Charles Fox Parham. Yet, as demonstrated in this study by Washburn professor Alan Bearman and his student Jennifer Mills, the Kansas roots of these manifestations of Christianity remain largely unknown. Specialists in American religious history know that the minister of Topeka's Central Congregational Church published In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? (1897) ten years before Walter Rauschenbusch penned his influential Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), and, likewise, they know that Pentecostalism began at Stone's Mansion or Stone's Folly in Topeka, Kansas, on New Year's Day 1901. So, although we know a good bit about the two principles and the movements they influenced, insufficient research exists regarding the way place, particularly Topeka, shaped these expressions of Christianity. This essay seeks to begin to fill this void as it reintroduces Topeka as an important element in the history of both the Social Gospel and Pentecostalism.

Tom Prasch, editor, "Insurgents and Guerillas, Cowboys and Indians, Lions and Tigers and Bears: Film and History in Kansas and the Great Plains."

Kansas History's fifth biennial set of film reviews-compiled, edited, and introduced by Tom Prasch, professor of history at Washburn University-features a diverse selection and begins as we have always begun with a look back at a film classic connected to Kansas/plains history. It is done this year with a twist: fifty years after Delmer Daves directed 3:10 to Yuma (1957), the film has been remade by James Mangold, and to begin this piece we offer a comparative perspective on both films. This opening critique is followed by reviews of two more western features, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Appaloosa, and an HBO film adaptation of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Next are several notable documentaries: Lost Nation: The Ioway; Kansas vs. Darwin and Fall from Grace; and Brian Schodorf's film examination of the rebuilding of a "green" Greensburg, Kansas. Since no film review section concerning Kansas would seem complete without a nod to Oz, this year's section includes the SciFi channel miniseries Tin Man, a sort of punk/futurist reimagining of the classic. Finally, we end with two more futuristic projections that employ the Kansas-as-center metaphor, where Kansas serves as the convenient site on which to map apocalyptic tomorrows. The survivors of apocalypse are placed in rural, small-town Kansas in two recent works, the now canceled television series Jericho and Kevin Willmott's film The Battle for Bunker Hill.

Reviews

Book Notes