Overview

Nearing 60, William D. Street (1851–1911) sat down to write his memoir of frontier life. Street’s early years on the plains of western Kansas were both ordinary and extraordinary; ordinary in what they reveal about the everyday life of so many who went out to the western frontier, extraordinary in their breadth and depth of historical event and impact. His tales of life as a teamster, cavalryman, town developer, trapper, buffalo hunter, military scout, and cowboy put us squarely in the middle of such storied events as Sheridan’s 1868–1869 winter campaign on the southern Plains and the Cheyenne Exodus of 1878. They take us trapping beaver and hunting buffalo for hides and meat, and driving cattle on the Great Western Cattle Trail. They give us insight into his evolving understanding of his multi-decade relationship with the Lakota. And they give us a front-row seat at the founding and development of Jewell and Gaylord, Kansas, and a firsthand look at the formation of Jewell’s “Buffalo Militia.” In later life Street rose to prominence as a newspaper publisher, state legislator, and regent of the Kansas State Agricultural College. At the time of his death—noted in the New York Times—he was still at work on his memoir. Handed down through his family over the past century and faithfully transcribed here, Street’s story of frontier life is as rich in history as it is in character, giving us a sense of what it was to be not just a witness to, but a player in, the drama of the plains as it unfolded in the late nineteenth century. Edited by Street’sgreat-grandson, with an introduction by Richard Etulain, a leading scholar of the West, this memoir is history as it was lived, recalled in sharp detail and recounted in engaging prose, for the ages. Warren R. Street is professor emeritus of psychology at Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington.

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9780700621712

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Reviews

William D. Street's memoir of life on the central and northern Great Plains is about as exciting as it gets for a vivid, page-turning reminiscence of the Old West. This is an important and highly recommended memoir. John Monnett, author of Tell Them We Are Going Home: The dyssey of the Northern Cheyennes An interesting, highly readable, and informative personal narrative covering events and experiences of real significance for early, post-Civil War settlement of Kansas and the Great Plains. Virgil Dean, editor of John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History A treasure house for those interested in the history both of Kansas and of the American West. Jim Hoy, author of Flint Hills Cowboys.

Twenty-five Years among the Indians and Buffalo, the memoir of William Street's exciting decade on the Central Plains during the 1870s, is a treasure house for those interested in the history both of Kansas and of the American West. During this seminal decade of westward expansion, Street was an Indian fighter, a soldier, a buffalo hunter, a trapper, a homesteader, a town founder, and a cowboy. (Like Jack Crabb in Thomas Berger's great novel, Little Big Man, Street seems to have been an active participant in nearly every occupation of the Old West.) Recorded in the early twentieth century, after Street had become a newspaper editor (which perhaps explains the clarity of his engaging prose), we gain new ground-level insights into activities, since mythologized, that were quotidian events for Street and his contemporaries. Jim Hoy, author of Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales from the Tallgrass Prairie

William D. Street's memoir of life on the central and northern Great Plains is about as exciting as it gets for a vivid, page-turning reminiscence of the Old West. This is an important and highly recommended memoir. John Monnett, author of Tell Them We Are Going Home: The dyssey of the Northern Cheyennes An interesting, highly readable, and informative personal narrative covering events and experiences of real significance for early, post-Civil War settlement of Kansas and the Great Plains. Virgil Dean, editor of John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History A treasure house for those interested in the history both of Kansas and of the American West. Jim Hoy, author of Flint Hills Cowboys .

Author Information

Warren R. Street is professor emeritus of psychology at Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington. Richard W. Etulain is professor emeritus of history and former director of the Center for the American West at the University of New Mexico. He is the author Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the American West and The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane.

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