Policing Sex in the Sunflower State: The Story of the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women by Nicole Perry (review)

Abstract

master editor, Finerty’s work finally emerges in its full glory. Paul Hedren, the editor of this volume, has devoted much of his life to studying this war, and his knowledge proves invaluable here. Hedren breaks down Finerty’s work chronologically. Hedren’s footnotes provide important crossreferences between other reporters, soldiers, and Finerty himself. In large part thanks to the digital revolution, Hedren produced a work that would have taken a lifetime or more in the preinternet era. What emerges is a resplendent telling of a complicated war, complete with brutal realism as well as flawed human understanding of the Indigenous people with whom the army fought. Finerty was a brilliant wordsmith with an eye for good stories. What emerges from the pages of this book is a better understanding of his thoughts on army officers, the Lakota, and some of the settlers in the Dakota Territory. The reporter was a creature of his times, though, and often only saw Indigenous people as worthy of being swept aside in the march toward modern civilization. If “Indian” were replaced by “Irish,” Finerty could have written an account from an English newspaper about Ireland. The parallels seem lost on him, though. Thankfully for modern historians, Paul Hedren lent his considerable talent to unearth these amazing primary sources. Any future work on the Sioux War will need to use this book as background material, which is both rich and deep.