(birds chirping) (birds chirping) (birds chirping) (birds chirping) - [Dick] I am talking to Ron Hull who had the good fortune to get to know Mari Sandoz.

What was she like to meet?

- [Ron] I think if you remembered anything that anyone would ever tell you about Mari Sandoz, you'd have to remember that this was a woman who worked harder than I think anybody I ever knew.

She always worked.

You know, she never claimed to be a Willa Cather or a great stream of consciousness kind of creative writer.

That wasn't her goal to be.

What her goal was to be a significant research person who carefully did research as the historian does, and then combine that with creative writing and some talent, which she certainly had.

She's the best storyteller ever.

She could talk for hours about stories in an animated way that just brought back everything.

The images that she conjured up in your mind were just magical.

- [Rita] I like to think that the beginning was this little girl who sat on the gatepost, and she'd rather read than eat.

Isn't this how your writing all began?

- Oh yes, I'd rather read than eat.

I'd rather read than eat now.

But that gatepost was a nice big old heavy one.

It was broad on top and flat and people went by.

The world went by.

Cowboys, Indians, and the wind and the birds and the dishes were behind me in the house.

(bright music) I didn't decide to become a writer.

I just got bored without having any stories through reading and the storytellers So I started telling myself stories.

(bright music) (bright music) (bright music) (bright music) (bright music) (bright music) - [Rita] You gave up a couple of times, didn't you though?

- [Mari] Yes.

- [Rita] Before Old Jules was published and didn't you go back to the Sandhills?

- [Mari] Yes, to get a little meat on my bones, yes.

The doctor found some spots on my lungs.

I'm down to 90 pounds and nobody wanted to read "Old Jules."

- [Rita] I think of this patience of you sending this over and over and over again.

- Doesn't a matter of patience you had to bear by the tail.

Everybody knew I was writing this book.

Was I going to admit that it wouldn't sell?

Not unless I had to.

- Do you ever envy her having gotten out and gotten away and lived another life, known two worlds?

- No, because she worked.

If I think I worked, she worked 10 times as hard.

- [Dick] At being a writer.

- At being a writer.

She really worked.

- [Dick] I don't know what kept her going in the same sense of your mother, but in another way.

She was rejected so long, and her manuscripts were considered worthless by so many.

- That's right.

- Publishers for so many years.

Now it seems strange.

(birds chirping) Why was that?

Were they looking for other kinds of material in those days?

- They didn't believe this country.

They just couldn't believe it.

(bright music) -[Shannon] This is a child who was beaten and grew up in a dugout and to emerge from that, into being a person who had enormous influence on what we know about the history of this region and Native American history and culture, I think the idea that she fought so hard to become a writer and very few people realize how old she was as all this was happening.

She didn't publish "Old Jules" until she was almost 40, and she really only had 20 solid years as a famous, well-known, respected author.

And the fact that she did that and came through with such powerful works and legacy is a remarkable thing.

(bright music) (bright music) (bright music) The Mari Sandoz society was founded in the 1970s by a group of people who were really passionate about sharing the history and legacy of Mari Sandoz.

They began to develop people's interests in Mari as a person, beyond just the books that she wrote.

So this organization really took shape in that decade or so after Mari died.

And then it became just much bigger over time, based out of Chadron and eventually raising enough money to build the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center that we're sitting in here today.

(bright music) - [Lauri] We have a lot of tourists through here that 'cause they love the museum, we'll have people, you know, from Canada or whatnot.

We get a lot of guests from, you know, back East, not just back East, but Massachusetts the other day, you know, New York.

They hear about it, they read about it, but they wanna see the real spot.

(bright music) On the south side, it's the dynamic slash permanent side of the Mari Sandoz High Plain Heritage Center.

And if you notice, we are super fortunate.

We actually have what I call the 3D effects, her hats, her clothing, her desk, her furniture from Greenwich Village in New York.

(bright music) There's one awesome display of her real jewelry, her scarves and whatnot, because when she was in New York, she was very fashion conscious.

(bright music) And what we have is the archives, which is a locked place where they have original manuscripts and her original clothing.

Really fancy, fun shoes.

And you can tell that she utilized them.

It wasn't just, you know, once in a while.

They're very well worn.

(bright music) -[Shannon] Really, right now we're at this next step, which we're gonna call Mari Sandoz Society 3.0.

And the main feature of that is going to be digitizing her collection of materials that she willed when she passed away in 1966.

She decided less than three months before she died that her materials would go to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

There was over a hundred linear feet of papers that were gifted.

So we're really excited to do this project that will join the Neihardt collection and the Cather collection as being three of the major authors and collections that are being held by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

(bright music) (bright music) -[Mary Ellen] I'm really excited about the Mari Sandoz archives and what she has there because well, there's so many aspects of it.

It's like, what do I start with?

So for correspondence, it's really exciting, and there's many different ways.

The amount, the personality of Mari Sandoz that comes through.

The way she was very clear about her opinion.

She was a generous and lovely woman, but she was not afraid to share her opinion.

I love that.

I love that she was such a strong advocate for her work and for a variety of communities.

And that's just correspondence.

Then you've got, over 350,000 is the number we have on her index cards, which she would keep all of her research that she would do, but she would gather a lot of articles and documents and stuff and keep that research.

So her research files are really large.

(bright music) And then we go into the manuscripts, which are really exciting because you can see the habit of writing in long hand in the beginning I understand.

And then she would slowly get her stuff typed and then edited and typed and edited again.

So you can see all those variations of a manuscript.

(bright music) The whole sum total of the collection, if you follow a thread of a person or a book or a theme, you can just see how much energy and time and research and thoughtfulness that she put into all of her work from the beginning to the end.

(bright music) - [Shannon] We are certain that once this is fully digitized and people can go in and do a Google search of this digital content, that they're gonna draw connections between events and people and research that she has done that's gonna be new.

And we think this will bring an entire renaissance of historical research about Mari Sandoz and the West.

(bright music) -[Mary Ellen] I'm excited about this, even though the digitization process will take a long time.

I'm excited because I think more people need to see who Mari is, like her advocacy for indigenous people, her really strong viewpoints on the strength of women in these environments.

I will say that's also exciting about the digitalization project is we've hired students to come in and start doing the indexing and listing all the different letters, and then they'll start doing some of the scanning now.

But they were so excited and so well versed in some of the topics that she talked about and some of the things that she said and some of the stories that were already coming out of her letters.

And so that level of enthusiasm that you just see in students as they're doing the work, is indicative of what people who could read more will learn and get excited about.

(bright music) -[Milena] So this is a letter in 1943 from a man named Roy Handley to Mari Sandoz.

And I think it just really strikes at the heart of like her significance and like who she was as a writer and a person.

The stories of Mari Sandoz shall live forever in the hearts of those who love the prairies and in years to come when the untamed country is but a memory, when the generations come and go and the living have gone to join the folks of yesterday.

And these books shall be a living testimony of the settling of the West, written by one who knows the West and in the plain language of the West, as spoken in the pioneer spirit that all can understand.

(bright music) (birds chirping)