Mari Sandoz is recognized as a novelist, historian, and biographer, as well as an authority on the Indians of the Great Plains. Her work varies in quality, her novels usually considered least successful, and her histories, particularly her biographies, most trenchant. In the latter she has fused her skill as a writer, her mastery of historical research, and her empathy for her subjects to create works of unique and lasting value. (p. 1)

Mari seemed to make little conscious distinction between methods of writing fiction and those of writing nonfiction. She spoke of using the same techniques for biography and for fiction, except that in biography one must keep as close to the actual story, the actual people, and the actual times as possible. Her nonfiction written as narrative history used facts and was faithful to them, but she concentrated on specific events and characters to bring out the drama. Mari's interest, and the theme of all her books, was in the relationship of man and the land. (pp. 1-2)

On her chosen landscape, the trans-Missouri basin, certain memorable men appeared from time to time, and it is their experiences she relates in her biographies and histories. Her subjects are significant because of their unique qualities as human beings, but also because in their individual lives they exhibit certain universal qualities. They respond and react to the force of events on the Great Plains, caught in a historical moment when one culture supersedes another.

Mari Sandoz also felt a strong need to preserve the past, seeing it as a guide to the future. Someday, she believed, man will learn that the same mistakes need not be made over and over, nor will each generation need to learn once more man's goodness, generosity, and courage. Her themes are the working of fate, the re-creation of the past, the importance of nature, the rhythm of life, the strength of evil as manifested in man's inhumanity to man, and, paradoxically, man's essential nobility. These themes shape her writing. Although Mari Sandoz left no written evidence of a consciously formulated philosophy of life, throughout her writing career her epic vision was remarkably consistent. She saw man romantically, larger than life, a creature who could occasionally display characteristics of grandeur. In her biographies, histories, and novellas, Mari Sandoz hoped to recreate the culture and virtues she found in the Plains societies of the past. (p. 2)

However, Mari Sandoz did not allow her sympathy for the cultures and the heroes of the past to stand in the way of what André Maurois has called the "indefatigable search for the truth." She worked constantly to correct false historical notions, as is attested by her frequent arguments with those who venerated such figures as Buffalo Bill Cody. Her quarrel was with history and biography that perpetuated the old, incorrect information. She combined her sympathy for her heroes with solid historical research, much of it in primary sources, some never used by other historians. (p. 3)

It has been charged that western writers are too close to their material, that their personal involvement prevents objectivity. On the other hand, these writers have the inestimable advantage of writing from inside their subject, an asset that no outsider, no matter how skilled or sympathetic, can acquire. Although Mari Sandoz aimed for truth and objectivity, she could not, of course, achieve it completely, any more than can any other historian or biographer. Whatever her purpose in writing beyond simply presenting the facts, that purpose directed her use of the raw material. She recognized this when she acknowledged that every event in Old Jules could be authenticated but the interpretation of the action was hers, and that she tried to make the book artistically and philosophically as well as historically true. She agreed with those who believe that writing is both an ethical and aesthetic problem.

Something of a mystic, Mari shared with most western American writers the classical view of myth and tragedy, emphasizing the importance of intuition rather than logic. Relying too heavily on reason could leave one out of tune with nature, she believed; response to the natural environment should be through emotion and the senses rather than through intellect. Her proclivity toward the occult encouraged her belief in fate as a force greater than the individual. She saw the death of Crazy Horse, for example, as fated…. Agreeing with the theory of the collective unconscious, she was strongly attracted to the use of image, myth, and symbol. The concrete images of her childhood included the guns of her father and the cattlemen he opposed; the smoky kitchen of her childhood home, Indian Hill; the Niobrara that flowed past the farm; and the sandhills. There was also, constantly, her intense awareness of nature. (pp. 3-4)

As a writer, she enjoyed working with both old and new forms. Allegory, one of the oldest and most didactic forms of storytelling, is recognizable in Winter Thunder, Slogum House, Capital City, and The Tom-Walker. Her nonfiction is less obviously allegorical, but the elements are there, stressing the author's belief in the absolute necessity of development through struggle, and, particularly in the Indian books, the loss the white civilization had inflicted upon itself because of its discrimination. She felt that the United States would always have on its conscience the sin of what it had done to the Indians, and for that reason would never be what it could have been. In her use of allegory she felt close to Faulkner and Hemingway. (p. 5)

With the exception of John G. Neihardt, western writers seem not to have influenced Mari Sandoz directly. She seldom discussed them individually in her letters, and when she did, or when she reviewed their books, she judged them primarily on the basis of the amount of research undertaken and the accuracy of their historical re-creation. She approved or disapproved of authors according to how well they presented history, since she thought of herself as a historian. The writers she felt worthwhile were those who had a sense of responsibility to world society as well as to that of their own locale, who understood their obligation to see the present and future implications of their material wholly and clearly and who presented it as honestly as possible. The trans-Missouri region was the one with which she had strong emotional ties and the one she knew best, but her writing was, she hoped, universal in scope. (pp. 5-6)

By conventional literary standards, Mari Sandoz's nonfiction measures up well. Strongly affected by her sense of history, of time and of place, she wrote powerful and effective histories when working with protagonists whom she could identify with her own region. She mastered the art of recreating a man and his culture, emphasizing the moral issues involved when one culture destroys another, and illustrating her own romantic view that man has dignity and worth. She adhered closely to carefully researched information, and the strength of her artistic imagination lay in creating a verisimilitude of actual events, rather than in creating imaginary scenes. In her biographies particularly she succeeds in re-creating the living past. (p. 7)

The re-creation of early settler life abounds in Plains literature, but Mari Sandoz's Old Jules is so unusual it has few imitations. Her ability to fuse Jules's importance to the region with scenes from his domestic life, while involving herself, is rare…. In 1935, Old Jules shocked people, not only because of the domestic scenes but because it showed the public a stark, unromantic view of the frontier. The strong language, the sometimes brutal realism, the frankness were all criticized vigorously, but they made the book powerful…. The conflicts described best in Old Jules, Crazy Horse, and Cheyenne Autumn still hold significance, although the specific incidents are well in the past. The West is now tamed, and the Indians are, legally at least, freer to move about as they please, but the emotions engendered by those conflicts are universal. Mari's people experience love, hate, ambition, jealousy, sorrow, fear, satisfaction and joy. Some are caught by forces too large for them to control—by a government gigantic and relentless and sometimes apparently mindless. Some learn their fate is controlled by men too small for their responsibilities, too ignorant or too greedy to value human life. And some fight back. (pp. 7-8)

Those books of her Great Plains series using an animal as the protagonist and humans as antagonists—The Buffalo Hunters, The Cattlemen, and The Beaver Men—have a less clear-cut focus, primarily because her efforts to cram a large amount of information into them make the works seem disjointed. Although the many minor characters, together with the vast amount of time and space involved, make these books less easily controlled by the author and sometimes a challenge to the reader's memory, they are stimulating, useful, and in most instances well written. Mari uses in these books the skills of the storytellers she heard and admired in her childhood to develop the many and disparate episodes making up the variegated thread of western history.

Mari Sandoz's prose, often lyrical and lovely, appears to be standing the test of time. Much of the timelessness is achieved through her use of images and symbols, the word-pictures by which she describes the geography of the Great Plains. Of special note is the language form she created for her narration of the Indian way of life. While other writers had stressed the Indian point of view, the language of the white author almost always interfered with the atmosphere of the Indian culture portrayed in the story. It is by means of her particular use of language in her Indian books that Mari Sandoz brings the reader to greater understanding and perhaps even identification with her Indian heroes.

It may be too soon to make serious critical judgments of Mari Sandoz's canon, but her work is impressive in both quantity and quality. (pp. 8-9)