Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
March 2000
Abstract
It was family pride that initially caused Arlene Jauken of southeast Nebraska to begin to research the life of her great-grandmother Sophie, one of four daughters of John German, an unfortunate pioneer who was murdered, along with three others in his family, on 11 September 1874, only a day's travel from the safety of Fort Wallace, Kansas. Almost immediately Jauken found that Sophie's story was inseparable from that of the other German girls whose lives were spared: seventeen-year- old Catherine, ransomed with twelve-year- old Sophie in March of 1875, and Julia and Addie, aged seven and five respectively, who were both rescued by daring army scouts in November 1874. This book is the result of Jauken's six years of research on her family's often mentioned but seldom understood role in the Red River War of 1874-75.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly, Volume 20, Number 2, Spring 2000, p. 165. © 2000 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska – Lincoln.