BY LORI VAN PELT | Assistant Editor

The Wyoming State Historical Society annual trek is planned for June 14-16, 2013, and will feature Crook County places and history. Trek registration forms are available online at www.wyshs.org or contact WSHS Executive Secretary Linda Fabian at linda@dancewyoming.org or (307) 322-3014.

The trek provides a good reason to become better acquainted with what WyoHistory.org offers as well. Each of the following articles includes field-trip suggestions and maps to help you prepare--before the trek or anytime you choose to visit Crook County and its historic sites.

See Nicole Lebsack’s history of Crook County at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/crook-county-wyoming.

See our brief article on Devil’s Tower at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/devils-tower.

Emilene Ostlind’s article, “The Powder River Basin: A Natural History,” includes a little about the history of Devil’s Tower National Monument. See http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/powder-river-basin-natural-history.

Read about the Vore Buffalo Jump, located just inside the Wyoming state line between Sundance, Wyo., and Spearfish, S.D., at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/vore-buffalo-jump.

Crook County was named for Brig. Gen. George Crook, who was in command of the Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition, based at Fort Fetterman. For more background about that fort, see http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/fort-fetterman.

Tribes, places and style

By Lori Van Pelt | In some publications, American Indians are referred to as Native Americans. Tribal names are used in the plural form. At WyoHistory.org, we’ve opted to use the term American Indians for the first reference in an article and Indians for the subsequent references.

These are choices about what editors call style—meaning the whole compendium of punctuation, grammar, usage, spelling and the rest. At WyoHistory.org we rely on Associated Press style, outlined in the organization’s Stylebook, and on the Chicago Manual of Style for bibliographic citations. Occasionally we make choices of our own. “American Indians” instead of “Native Americans” is a case in point.

Editor Tom Rea explains the reasons why: “Mostly because we think it's the term everyone best understands. We do know it came about because Columbus mistook the people of the New World for People of the Old. But most Indian people we know don't mind the term, though they would prefer we use tribal names whenever possible. Use of the term ‘Native American’ still confuses a lot of people, because they think it refers to exactly what it says—anyone born in the Americas.”

We also refer to tribes in the singular. That is, the Arapaho, the Crow, the Assiniboine, rather than Arapahoes, Crows, Assiniboines. Also, however, we often change the sentence around to avoid confronting the question. If a contributor writes, “Troops under Gen. Patrick Connor attacked a village of 500 Arapahoes on Tongue River . . . .” we editors might change it to “attacked an Arapaho village of 500 people . . . .”

For example, see Lesley Wischmann’s article, “Separate Lands for Separate Tribes: The Horse Creek Treaty of 1851” at http://www.wyohistory.org/essays/horse-creek-treaty.

Place names also present some style challenges. Have you ever noticed that sometimes Bighorn is used, while at other times, you’ll see this as two words instead of one: Big Horn. Why does this occur?

Writer Emilene Ostlind, who has personal experience with this particular style question, explains in her new article on the Bighorn Basin: “The U.S. Geological Survey uses ‘Bighorn’ as a single word to refer to natural geographic structures–Bighorn Basin, Bighorn River, Bighorn Canyon, Bighorn Lake, Bighorn Mountains–and ‘Big Horn’ as two words to refer to human establishments such as the towns and counties named Big Horn in Wyoming and Montana. The U.S.G.S. also lists ‘Big Horn’ as a variant spelling for geographic features, and both spellings are used on maps and other published materials. Growing up in the town of Big Horn I learned to write my address or refer to my school with two words, and to describe the mountains with one word: the Bighorns.”

For place names, we use the excellent website Wyoming Places, edited by Venice Beske of the Wyoming State Library, which has updated Mae Urbanek’s standard book, Wyoming Place Names.

Check out our Calendar

Under “WyoHistory.org news” near the bottom of the home page, click on Learn more under “Calendar,” and find a Google calendar of upcoming talks, re-enactments, gatherings and other history-related events around Wyoming.

Please contact Editor Tom Rea at editor@wyohistory.org for information about how you can submit activities to our calendar of upcoming history events throughout Wyoming.

Come join us as we explore Wyoming’s History. We welcome your feedback. Send comments, questions or suggestions to Tom Rea at editor@wyohistory.org.

Your support is appreciated

We want to keep this website as a permanent and growing archive of Wyoming’s history. We welcome your support. You can donate via PayPal, or contact Editor Tom Rea directly at editor@wyohistory.org.