by Mari Sandoz

Mari Sandoz was born to a Swiss Germanspeaking family on a homestead in northwestern Nebraska in 1896. As a child, she was exposed to the Cheyenne and Sioux tribes, who lived on neighboring reservations and often pitched their tepees near her house when visiting the area. She later became a scholar of the Great Plains, researching and writing about American Indian history in that area, especially on the turbulent events of the nineteenth century.

Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place

Plains Indians during the 1840s. The Story Catcher takes place on the High Plains north and west of the Bighorn Mountains, which cross from present-day Montana into Wyoming. Although many American Indians considered the encroaching settlement of whites a threat by this time, the most serious of the battles against the U.S. military had not yet taken...