Among the Sioux of Dakota

In 1869 the federal government sent Captain D.C. Poole to Whetsone Agency, near Yankton, Dakota Territory, to serve as agent to the Brule and Oglala bands of the Sioux or Lakota people. There he witnessed and recorded their first experiment with reservation life—a stressful time of enforced social and cultural change. In these memoirs, first published in 1881 and never before made widely available, Poole depicts the daily life of the agency and problems of the agent. Despite his lack of insight into American Indian culture, he also created a valuable record of Sioux customs and beliefs.

In an insightful new introduction, Raymond J. DeMallie, director of the American Indian Studies Research Institute and professor of anthropology at the University of Indiana, places Poole's memoirs in their nineteenth-century context and explains the circumstances surrounding the agent's work at Whetstone Agency.