Building on a Borrowed Past

Sally J. Southwick is a native of southwestern Minnesota and has lived throughout the West. An independent scholar, she has written on United States culture and western history.

Pipestone illustrates the persistent tension inherent in American attempts to adapt the continent's past for use as a foundation on which to build a cohesive identity. The selective use of a Native sense of sacred traditions made the landscape historically meaningful and worth preserving without compromising secular cultural beliefs in American material progress. "Who would have guessed that a slender volume about a tiny prairie town could address so many important topics?" (Western Historical Quarterly) "This fine-grained study of a single community illuminates the larger process of culture production and offers significant insights on the ways that Euro-Americans rewrote the history of expansionism and dispossession of native people." (Minnesota History)