I earned my BA from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, my MA from the University of South Dakota (1972) and my Ph.D. from the University of Toledo (1978).  Before coming to the University of Oklahoma, in the fall of 1991, I taught for ten years at Texas A&M University.

Research

    I specialize in Ethnohistory and the history of Native Americans of the Great Plains and American Southwest.  My most recent book is The Indian's Southwest 1580-1830:  Ethnogenesis and Cultural Reinvention.  I also wrote a biography of Sitting Bull for the Library of American Biography Series.  My earlier books include Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862 and Little Crow, Spokesman for the Sioux, as well as the edited Through Dakota Eyes:  Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862.  My next book project will explore the connection between the Texas Revolution and Southern Plains Indian policy.

Courses

    I teach both halves of the US Survey, two upper division courses on Native Americans:  one on Plains Indians, and the other an American Indian Survey to 1870.  I also teach a graduate seminar in American Indian History.
 
 

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