Dovetails in Tall Grass

By Samantha Specks

Spark Press     2021

310 pages     Historical Fiction

The Shortlist

This summer I was privileged to read several books about relationships between native peoples and white Americans in Minnesota. They included This Tender Land and Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger and also Dovetails in Tall Grass, by Samantha Specks. One of the troubling things that I have learned is that I was never taught anything about the Dakota Wars or anything about the treatment of Native Americans as Minnesota was being established and settled.

I learned nothing about any of this in any history class I took as a young person. However, I was very aware of native reservations  that were prevalent in the Minnesota of my childhood. It seems ironic that I was so troubled when we all learned about the destruction of the “Black Wall Street” and the death of African Americans in 1918 Tulsa, Oklahoma, while I knew nothing about the thirty-eight Dakota men who were hung in 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota. ”To this day, this is the largest mass execution in United States history.” An article on Minnesota Public Radio discusses why the topic is not taught in Minnesota schools.

Specks does a remarkable job of telling the story of the Dakota Wars through the lens of two teenage girls, Emma Heard, the daughter of settlers in New Ulm, Minnesota, and Oenikika, the daughter of Chief Little Crow. I was particularly taken by Oenikika. She knew that she was born to be a healer. She notices the pull of the plants as she walks in the prairie: “My soul was listening as much as my ears. I was sensing it again—their pull. The plants of healing whispered through the rustling grasses.” Reminded me so much of Robin Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass. Emma thinks that she is called to be a teacher. Both are remarkable young women and great witnesses to the conflict that emerges.

This is a beautifully-written witness to Minnesota during the Civil War, the Dakota Wars, as well as an eloquent observation of teenage girls of any generation.

 Here is the Kirkus review. Samantha Specks website.