Wildlife conservation falls under the tribal game code on the Wind River Indian Reservation, but throughout the years, tribal authority in many matters and the tribes’ relationship with the U.S. government has changed and evolved. We bring you articles about both these issues this month at WyoHistory.org.

February is Black History Month, and we also highlight some new video content and previous articles that feature topics about black history in Wyoming. 

Wildlife conservation on Wind River

Tribal sovereignty, retained by the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho since before Wyoming statehood,governs wildlife conservation on the more than two million acres of tribal lands on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Game populations have increased steadily since a tribal game code was adopted in 1984. See more in writer Greg Nickerson’s article “Managing Game on the Wind River Reservation.”

Changes in tribal government 

In the early decades of the 20th century, Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho people in Wyoming found new ways to hold on to old traditions of authority, reached a formal settlement of a longstanding dispute between them while always working on their evolving relationships with the U.S. government. Learn more in the WyoHistory.org article “Holding on to Sovereignty: The Tribes Mix Old Forms with New.”

Black History Month updates and links 

February is Black History Month. Our visitors may be interested to know that Phil White’s article “The Black 14: Race, Politics, Religion and Wyoming Football,”first posted in 2014, now includes some more recent video content that helps illustrate the events surrounding the 1969 conflict:

• “Black 14.” Topic.com, accessed Jan. 16, 2019 at https://www.topic.com/black-14.  A recent, 15-minute documentary on the topic, with extensive television news footage from October 1969. Directed by Darius Clark Monroe with Spike Lee as executive producer.
• “The Black 14.” SC Featured: The Power of Sports. ESPN network. Accessed http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=22566174. A seven-minute video about the events of October 1969 and their aftermath, including television news footage from the time and recent comments from surviving members of the Black 14, together with shots of Colin Kaepernick. Scott Hares, producer; Katelin Stevens, editor.
• Browne, Rembert. “Asking for More: The Lessons of the Black 14.” Topic.com, accessed  Jan. 16, 2019 at https://www.topic.com/asking-for-more-the-lessons-of-the-black-14. Browne’s opinion piece connects the Black 14 with the Colin Kaepernick controversy and other events in the history of American civil rights. “Black people with an opinion were frowned on in 1969,” he writes. “They still are today.”

For further reading about black history, see these previous articles on WyoHistory.org:

• Buffalo Soldiers in Wyoming and the West
• William Jefferson Hardin: Wyoming’s first black legislator
• Mathew Campfield: Barber, Coroner and Pioneer Survivor
• Making a Home in Empire, Wyo.
• Carrie Burton Overton, First African-American Female Student at UW
• This Great Struggle: African-American Churches in Rock Springs
• Liz Byrd, First Black Woman in Wyoming’s Legislature
• Dr. Willie Black, Chancellor of the Black Student Alliance in 1969, on the Black 14
• Former University of Wyoming Football Player Mel Hamilton on his life and the Black 14

Digital Toolkits

Toolkits updated to align with Wyoming state and Common Core social studies and English Language Arts standards

The Wyoming State Department of Education recently reviewed our Digital Toolkits of Wyoming History, and they are now in alignment with the state’s social studies and language arts standards. Click here to see a spreadsheet the new standards alignments.

New Toolkit of Wyoming History: Who Are the Northern Arapaho People?

Visit our Wyoming History Day page

The theme for the 2018-2019 competition is “Triumph and Tragedy in History.” The Wyoming History Day contest will be held April 14-15, 2019, and the National History Day competition is slated for June 9-13, 2019. 

Teachers, students and others interested in the Wyoming History Day contest, which will be held in Laramie April 14-15, 2019, can find more information—including contest dates and links and Wyoming History Sample Topics--by clicking on the “History Day” tab on the orange bar on the WyoHistory.org home page or by visiting  https://www.wyohistory.org/wyoming-history-day.

Timely Books!

Lady’s Choice: Ethel Waxham’s Journals and Letters, 1905-1910. Compiled and edited by Barbara Love and Frances Love Froidevaux. 394 pages, University of New Mexico Press, 1993. Paperback $35.00. John McPhee read Ethel Waxham’s journals and letters when he interviewed one of her sons, J. David Love, an eminent Wyoming geologist, for his own book, Rising from the Plains. Waxham’s writings tell the story of her experiences in the remote area of Wyoming southeast of Lander, first when she accepted a teaching position at the Twin Creek School near Hailey, Wyoming, in 1905 and through the five years following, when she earned her master’s degree in literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and also taught in Wisconsin and in Pueblo, Colo. This was also the half-decade when a man named John Galloway Love, a sheep rancher whom she met in Wyoming in 1905, courted her partially through his correspondence and eventually won her hand after enduring many rebuffs on her part. Their letters, along with Waxham’s letters to other friends and her diary entries and poems reveal the difficulties and delights of the era as well as sharing personal thoughts. These create a vivid picture Wyoming at that time while also illuminating the realities of life in the West. And, as McPhee remarks, “Ethel’s writing is also valuable for its sheer quality.” A doctor’s daughter, Waxham graduated from Wellesley College with a Phi Beta Kappa key, and her choice of both rugged Wyoming and the Scotsman Love show her strong spirit and sense of adventure. The book can be ordered directly from the publisher by calling 800-249-7737 or visiting https://unmpress.com, or at bookstores or through other online sources. 

Life on Muskrat Creek: A Homestead Family in Wyoming. Ethel Waxham Love and J. David Love, edited by Frances Love Froidevaux and Barbara Love. 250 pages, Lehigh University Press, copublished by Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2018. Hardback, $40.00, eBook, $38.00 The sequel to Lady’s Choice continues the story of Ethel Waxham Love’s adventures in Wyoming, after she married her beloved Scotsman John Galloway Love. This book intersperses Ethel’s writings with those of her son J. David Love, to detail the peaks and valleys of life on a ranch so remote that the nearest town, tiny Moneta, was 15 miles away. Some of the writing is previously unpublished, and the book contains several family and ranch photographs. One of them shows Ethel on washday at the Love Ranch in 1917, preparing to hand wash the family clothes in galvanized tubs. She ironed the next day, but if the clothes, which were line-dried, had frozen overnight, they first had to be kept near the stove to dry out. The book can be ordered directly from the publisher by visiting https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781611462647/Life-on-Muskrat-Creek-A-Homestead-Family-in-Wyomingor at bookstores or through other online sources.