Review of \u3ci\u3e I Do Not Apologize for the Length of This Letter : The Mari Sandoz Letters on Native American Rights, 1940-1965\u3c/i\u3e Introduced and edited by Kimberli A. Lee

Novelist, historian, and biographer Mari Sandoz holds a unique position as an authority on the American West. She was born in 1896 in one of the last areas of the West to be settled by whites, the sparse and empty Nebraska Sandhills. Her father befriended many of the Sioux and Cheyennes from the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation. Sandoz grew up hearing the stories of people like He Dog, a close friend of Crazy Horse and brother-in-law of Red Cloud, Wild Hog, the Cheyenne warrior who played a crucial role in the Cheyenne Exodus, Short Bull, Old Cheyenne Woman, and others who had participated in and witnessed the West\u27s seminal events: the Battle of Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull\u27s exodus, and the death of Crazy Horse. As a young woman in the 1930s Sandoz returned to Pine Ridge to interview the elders and to talk with the families and relatives of men like Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. Later she would conduct interviews on the Northern Cheyenne reservation with the handful of still-living survivors who had participated in the Cheyennes\u27 struggle to retain their culture and land. Although she did not record her interviews, she took meticulous and thorough notes