Tag Archives: Winter Count

Happy #ThrowbackThursday from Nebraska Memories.

We’re changing it up a little this week to showcase the wide variety of documents in the Nebraska Memories archive. While photographs are visually captivating, Nebraska Memories contains so much more than just photos. Today we have just such an example with a Mr. John Ellis’s autograph album. Containing inscriptions from the 1880’s, take a little time to read through them. We’ve only included a few in this post, but another fifteen are available for your perusal on the Nebraska Memories website. Check them out, there are some really comical and interesting inscriptions!

This 5″ x 3″ autograph album has a cover with a floral design on it. The pages of the album are filled with inscriptions addressed to “John” or “Johnnie.” Some of the inscriptions have dates from years in the 1880s.

Johny Ellis 
Some write for plesure [pleasure]
Some write for fame
But I write simply to sine my name. 
Franklin. C Compton. 
Genoa. Neb. [Nebraska] Feb. [February] 24. 1888

Friend Johnnie
If in this world of grief and pain
My friend..we never meet again
Oh.. my we meet beyond the the skies
Where friendship blooms and never dies
Your well wisher
Lennie[?] Foster
Genoe [Genoa] Neb [Nebraska] Mar [March] 4th 1881

Dec. [December]  18th 1887 
Friend John 
Remember me when far far off
Where the woodchucks die
Of whooping cough.

Yours Truly
John T. Nutcher
Reed Box Butte Co. [County]
Nebr. [Nebraska]

Interested in Nebraska history? Find out more about this photo in the Nebraska Memories archive!

Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. The Nebraska Memories archive is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information.

#ThrowbackThursday takes a look at what’s inside the Nebraska State Historical Society collection today.

Sam Kills Two, also known as Beads, works on his Winter Count, a historical calendar with painted pictographs on a stretched animal skin outside a tipi. The death of Turning Bear, killed by a passenger train in Valentine, Nebraska, in 1912, is shown in the second row just above Kill Two’s left foot by the picture of a locomotive. Kills Two is dressed in native clothing and wears two feathers in his hair. The photograph was taken at the Rosebud Reservation.

Kills Two, a Brule Sioux medicine man, provided a written interpretation of the Winter Count which is held by the Sioux Indian Museum in Rapid City, South Dakota. The Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation is located nine miles north of Valentine, Nebraska, in South Dakota.

Interested in Nebraska history? Find out more about this photo in the Nebraska Memories archive!

Nebraska Memories is a cooperative project to digitize Nebraska-related historical and cultural heritage materials and make them available to researchers of all ages via the Internet. The Nebraska Memories archive is brought to you by the Nebraska Library Commission. If your institution is interested in participating in Nebraska Memories, see http://nlc.nebraska.gov/nebraskamemories/participation.aspx for more information.