Nancy M. Peterson

When Chicago reporter Teresa Dean arrived at Pine Ridge on the Sioux Indian Reservation in 1890,the first words she heard were, "Go home!" "It's too dangerous!" "This is no place for a woman."

Her fellow reporters, all male, all loaded down with rifles and revolvers, were about to have their photo taken, one to send to all their editors back East. The stylishly dressed woman might raise doubts about the grave danger they wrote of daily: they were risking their lives to cover the "Battle of Wounded Knee." She was escorted out of the frame.

Read how Reporter Dean's experiences at Pine Ridge changed her life and her perception of the Sioux in the Nancy Peterson's article "Unwantd Reporter" in the October issue of Wild West magazine now on the newsstands.

Chicken Soup for the Soul is reprinting Nancy's essay, "Stepping Out," as promotional material for the book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Empty Nesters published in 2008. The story describes how she and her husband avoided becoming Mr. and Mrs. Curmudgeon after the last chick left for college. To get a new life, they signed up for Western dance lessons and were soon doing Cotton-Eyed Joes and Tush Pushes with the best of them. That led to square dancing and a whole new world. The piece appears in the August 22 issue of Woman's World magazine.


Look for the June issue of Wild West magazine. Nancy Peterson's article, "The Huntress and Her Wildlife," tells the story of Martha Maxwell, who went to Colorado to hunt for gold and discovered a new art that would become her obcession.

Maxwell immersed herself in the study of Colroado's fauna and taught herself to preserve the creatures she collected using the new science of taxidermy. Slight of form but determined in spirit, she learned to shoot and took her daughter and husband on strenuous collection trips in both mountains and plains.

But her preserved birds, rabbits and foxes did not stand stifly on shelves. With her knowledge of nature and artistic talent, she displayed her finds in their natural habitat, the first taxidermist to do so. Grasses and flowers, rocks and brush, pine trees and boulders recreated their accustomed homes. And they were in action. A mountain lion leaped after a deer. A fox peered from a crevice. An eagle perched on a dead limb. People had never seen anything like it.

She quickly earned respect and fame. But her obcession allowed little time for family and relatonshps were strained. In Wild West , read how she struggled to achieve greater fame and make a living as the only female taxidermist in the nation.

"Footprints along the Platte" was Nancy Peterson's topic when she spoke to the Windsor Gardens Friday Book Review Club last spring.

The slide talk was based on interesting people she discovered when researching and writing People of the Moonshell; A Western River Jounral. The book explores the importance of the Platte River, which became the way West for explorers, pioneers, Pony Express riders, telegraphers, artists, scientists, and railroaders.

Working from diaries, journals, letters and reminiscences, Peterson delves into the experiences of such historical characters as young Dr. Edwin James, the first man to climb Pike's Peak, William N. Byers, who founded the Rocky Mountain News and gold-seeker Molly Sanford, who found life disrupted when her husband went off to fight a Rebel force in Colorado's Civil War.

Half-blood Linda Gruno, whose father was Creek and mother Irish, writes to the author, "I understand how hard it is to be part of two cultures. Unfortunately, one is never quite fully embraced by either one. For my Indian relatives, I am too white. For my white relatives, I am not white enough. For myself, I am just right."

She adds, "I wish this book had been available to me when I was growing up. It would have helped me greatly."

Nancy M. Peterson explores the impact of bison on people in the West in the February '09 issue of Wild West magazine. Travelers who explored the West were ever changed by it, and the huge creatures who were awsome enmasse and formmidable as loners challenged their courage and imprinted their memories. None, from trapper Osbourne Russell, who fired 26 bullets into a bull that refused to die, to an emigrant womn who crouched helplessly as bison stampeded through her wagon train, to bespectacled tenderfoot Teddy Roosevelt, who endured days of cold, rain and fog to finally make his kill, ever forgot this monster of the plains.

Peterson also writes of the foresight of the few men who prevented the bisons' extinction, and of modern-day ranchers who are raising the animals in nearly every state of the union. Recent efforts of the U.S. Department of Wildlife to preserve and increase the most genetically pure bison bring the story full circle.


Nancy was also asked by Wild West to choose the Wid West's Top Ten Rivers west of the Mississippi. Which would you choose? The Missouri? The Platte? The Rio Grande? The Columbia? What about California's American, where gold was discovered? And do you know why Arizona's Gila River and Utah's City Creek found their place on the list? Does Sand Creek's sigificance make up for its lack of size? And how about the Sweetwater, which enabled pioneers to get across barren Wyoming Basin? And wouldn't the Indians choose the Little Bighorn?

Check the February 2009 issue of Wild West for Nancy's final choices and see if you agree.

The Western Writers of America's anthology The Way West, contains Nancy M. Peterson's story of Indian writer Zitkala-Sa's involvement in The Sun Dance opera. It is listed in Google Book Search.