Special to the Register

One good thing about history: More of it stacks up every day. This renewable resource provides material for stories that are tough, funny, inspiring – and true.

The State Historical Society of Iowa, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, recently bestowed its inaugural Dorothy Schwieder Excellence in Research Award on J.L. Anderson’s latest book, “Capitalist Pigs,” about the history of pork production. The biennial award recognizes major contributions to Iowa history and honors its namesake, who died in 2014 after a distinguished career as an American historian, biographer and professor at Iowa State University.

This historical society also gave its annual Benjamin Shambaugh Award to Linda Clemmons for her book “Dakota in Exile.” The award honors the previous year’s best Iowa history book as well as the award’s namesake, who led the historical society for many years and taught history at the University of Iowa at the turn of the 20th century.

This year’s jury wrote the following reviews of both award winners, plus two books that received honorable mentions.

Schwieder Award winner

“Capitalist Pigs,” by J.L. Anderson. (285 pages, West Virginia Press)

I first met author Joe Anderson 25 years ago when he was the director of interpretation at Living History Farms and was immediately stuck by his knack for conveying history in an engaging manner.

It was here at the Farms and other outdoor museums where he worked, Anderson tells us in his latest book, “Capitalist Pigs,” that he developed “a personal and professional interest in swine.” Since then, he has gone on to become one of the leading figures in the fields of American agricultural and rural history.

With crisp prose, descriptive charts, maps and handsome illustrations, this thoughtful volume examines the significance of pigs in America, from the Columbian Exchange and European arrival to the present. Anderson argues that pigs played a special part in our history, revealing the changing aspects of economic power and conflict throughout the development of the country.

Organized topically rather than chronologically, the book addresses the husbandry of pigs as well as issues of consumption, production, technology, scientific advancement and government involvement in the industry.

Early European settlers and then Americans allowed their hogs to roam freely, making them “valuable allies” in displacing Native American populations by destroying or rooting out many of their food sources. Conflict often ensured, and native people were pushed west.

Others, meanwhile, saw opportunities and made millions on pork. First in Cincinnati — dubbed “Porkopolis” by the mid-19th century — and later in Chicago, entrepreneurs created economies of scale, combined the then-distinct operations of slaughtering and packing pork into consolidated, large-scale enterprises where the introduction of conveyor belts mechanized much of the process. These “disassembly lines” predated Henry Ford’s assembly line by more than half a century.

At the same time railroads were creating a national mass market, the price of packed pork fell, and it became the meat of America’s working classes, as well as the one that plantation owners provided their slaves.

Although Anderson gives more weight to the 19th century, the book is comprehensive. It addresses the role pigs played as waste removers and recyclers, hog cholera and the government’s intervention to control it, the rebranding of pork as “the other white meat,” the industrialization of the pork business and the impacts of large confinement operations, and the importance of the export market.

Iowans should be especially interested in this book, given the significance the state has played in the development of the hog business. And, of course, pigs remain critical to our economy as Iowa is the leading producer of pork in the nation.

“Capitalist Pigs” offers a textured, complex portrait of pigs and pig products throughout the history of the United States. It is sure to provide new and valuable insights for all Iowa readers, whether you are rural or urban, have experience raising hogs, or just enjoy ham, bacon, or sausage.

— William Friedricks is a professor of history at Simpson College, where he directs the Iowa History Center, and serves on the board of the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Shambaugh Award winner

“Dakota in Exile: The Untold Stories of Captives in the Aftermath of the U.S.-Dakota War,” by Linda Clemmons. (272 pages, University of Iowa Press)

In “Dakota in Exile,” Linda Clemmons explores an overlooked chapter of the U.S.-Dakota War — specifically, what happened to Dakota prisoners who escaped the mass execution of 38 of their number at Mankato, Minnesota, in 1862. Clemmons uses the story of Robert Hopkins and his family, Dakota converts to Christianity, to put a face on the larger group whose lives were permanently disrupted, or destroyed, by the war and its aftermath.

“Dakota in Exile” is a story of both Iowa and the Midwest. The Dakota War over treaty violations took place in southwestern Minnesota while the broader Civil War raged farther south, but its reverberations affected farmer-settlers in border areas of both Minnesota and Iowa. Readers may be more familiar with the fighting, which took place in 1862, as the Sioux Uprising or the Dakota Conflict. Treaty violations, as well as annuity payments that came late or not at all, led to hunger and unrest among the Dakota. This led to attacks on settlements, and months of fighting between the Dakota and the U.S. Army.

The U.S. government imprisoned more than 300 Dakota men who were convicted of murder to Camp Kearney Prison in Davenport, where they stayed until 1866. The government exiled the prisoners’ families to Crow Creek, in Dakota Territory. Eventually, as the government pardoned and released the prisoners, and set up new reservations for the Dakota, they were moved to new locations in Dakota Territory and Nebraska.

Clemmons tells a story of suffering but also adaptation. Hopkins and others like him struggled to survive their imprisonment and made good use of their connections with missionaries in order to plead for their freedom. In order to earn desperately needed money for food, clothing, paper and postage, they took shells from the Mississippi River and carved them, and many a child in Davenport had a Dakota-made bow and arrow set.

In addition to poor conditions, the prisoners endured the stares and abuse of the Davenport locals, who treated them as animals in a zoo. Their families in Crow Creek struggled along without them, without adequate food, clothing or shelter. Hopkins’ wife, Sarah, contracted a fatal case of tuberculosis.

Families like the Hopkinses used many tools to mitigate the worst effects of their ordeal. Some turned to Christianity, and by doing so gained what little protection the missionaries could provide. They learned how to read and write Dakota, so they could communicate with their families across the miles. Others took the most contested action of all and joined the Dakota scouts and the U.S. Army in disciplining and fighting against their own people.

While all of these actions loosened the bonds of Dakota culture, the Dakota also made use of religion, literacy and collaboration for their own purposes.

Clemmons has written a fascinating account of a chapter of Midwestern and Iowa history with which most of us are unfamiliar. In doing so, she has helped to create a fuller and more nuanced view of the Native American history of our region.

— Reviewer Pamela Riney-Kehrberg teaches American history at Iowa State University.

Shambaugh Award honorable mention

“Dutch Transplanters on the Grasslands and the Fruits of Chain Migration,” by Brian W. Beltman. (365 pages, Amazon)

Iowa is often seen as a flyover state, yet aspects of its culture besides politics (the Iowa caucuses) and leisure (RAGBRAI) do sometimes gain attention outside the state.

In November 2017, the New Yorker ran a report by Larissa MacFarquhar on Orange City: “Where the Small-Town American Dream Lives On.” More recently, as part of a wide-ranging historiographical essay in the Middle West Review on Midwestern identity, Jon Lauck urged scholars to “capture the nuances of German Minnesota, Dutch Iowa, Norwegian South Dakota, and Yankee Michigan.”

A nuanced analysis of the formative years of Dutch Iowa, including Orange City and Pella, as well as Dutch South Dakota, is at the heart of Brian W. Beltman’s new book. Beltman is not new to the subject. His book is a reframing and extension of his previous articles — including three in the Annals of Iowa — and a condensing of his book “Dutch Farmer in the Missouri Valley: The Life and Letters of Ulbe Eringa, 1866–1950” (1996). It amounts to a summa of Beltman’s immigration and settlement scholarship. As such, it is an important addition to the quantitative, sociocultural and intellectual history tradition of Beltman’s acknowledged mentors: Allan G. Bogue, Paul K. Conkin, and Robert P. Swierenga. That the book is self-published reflects the author’s persistence in his retirement to making a substantive contribution to scholarship despite not having had a career as a historian.

The book’s title, which, despite its length, does not specify Iowa and South Dakota, does suggest Beltman’s central argument: From the mid-19th into the early 20th century, in a carefully planned process, Dutch Reformed immigrants collectively transplanted “kith and kin” to the Midwestern prairie grasslands of Marion and Sioux Counties in Iowa and Douglas, Charles Mix and Bon Homme Counties in South Dakota. This series of chain migrations, contiguous “neighborhood” settlement, and endogamous marriage established rural and small-town communities of sociocultural “Dutchness” that persist today and are most readily visible in regional institutions such as Northwestern College, Central College, Reformed and Christian Reformed congregations, and tulip festivals.

The author draws on immigration, census and land records and provides supportive tables and maps of Dutch settlement in the specified counties in Iowa and South Dakota. Proceeding chronologically in part one, he traces the careful transplanting of Dutch Calvinist families first to Marion County and Pella in the 1840s and 1850s, then to Sioux County and Orange City in the 1870s. Most of the Iowa Dutch supported the Union cause during the Civil War, but Beltman documents how a minority, in part because of memories of war and conscription in the Netherlands, in part because of fear of what losses the war could bring to their families, made a temporary trek to Oregon. Most returned to Iowa after the war. In the 1880s further transplanting from Orange City reached into southeast South Dakota.

Beltman’s approach is solidly quantitative, but he carefully incorporates individual and family accounts along the way. Further, in part two, he focuses on selected individuals and connects their experiences to the larger sociohistorical processes he discusses. First, he analyzes E.J.G. Bloemendaal (Sioux County, Iowa), then he turns to Ulbe and Maaike Eringa (Bon Homme County, South Dakota).

Self-publishing brings its own editing challenges. The book cover is a pen-and-ink sketch of a farmscape, but, without any title or attribution, it seems tenuously tied to the topic. Some of the maps are a bit blurry and hard to read, and attributions are scarce. There are no illustrations, either of individuals or buildings or towns discussed. Beltman ties his material to larger discussions of immigration, migration, ethnicity and region. Nevertheless, his discussions at times can seem perfunctory or dated, such as “market and community” and region. Regarding region, he is more keyed to connecting his material to the West than to the burgeoning discussion of the Midwest.

The book’s weaknesses are minor, however. Beltman’s writing is clear. His analysis is carefully stated and balanced. He blends quantitative material and personal accounts effectively. He describes in detail how and why Dutch American colonies in Iowa and South Dakota were made and persist: “Ethnic persistence is strongly linked to ethnic territoriality” (342). To the same point, Sioux County colonist E. J. G. Bloemendaal was more colorful in his 1911 memoir: “America is a good land! ... [Still,] the more Hollanders come, the better I like it, and the better they fare, the more pleased I will be” (288). This is now the best book with which to begin to understand the Midwestern Dutch experience west of the Mississippi River.

— Reviewer Douglas Firth Anderson is a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, coauthor of the book “Orange City” and co-editor of the faculty research open-access annual Northwestern Review. This book review was originally published in The Annals of Iowa.

Shambaugh Award honorable mention

“A Life on the Middle West’s Never-Ending Frontier,” by Sandy Boyd. (394 pages, University of Iowa Press)

Willard Lee Boyd Jr. — better known as “Sandy” — faced a challenge in writing this book. How could someone who led two major institutions and collaborated on a limitless number of projects and programs capture his life in a few hundred pages?

The secret to Boyd’s success with this marvelous memoir is in his final paragraph. “Do not venture unsolicited advice or unsubstantiated opinions,” he writes, “but if you must — BE BRIEF.” Those words have been a touchstone for Sandy Boyd throughout his life and career.

So it’s no surprise that Boyd covers the details of his life expeditiously. He touches on his formative years in Minnesota, his military service and his legal education with efficiency.

He gives most of his attention to his time at the University of Iowa. Beginning in 1954 with his appointment as a professor of law, he held increasingly important positions, culminating with a momentous tenure as president from 1969 to 1981.

These were dynamic years for the university in general and Boyd in particular. His vision, wisdom and temperament were reflected in his commitment to higher education in turbulent times.

In 1981, Boyd began a 15-year tenure as president of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Again, his patience and temperament guided him and those who worked for him to shape a vision for the Field Museum and other cultural institutions in the country.

He returned to the university in 1996 to take on the challenge of building a center on the leadership of non-profit institutions. In that way, he became a mentor for many leaders across our state. He also joined and participated in a variety of boards and initiatives that improved the quality of life for all of us.

This is an exceptional book about an extraordinary life, and the lasting value of both can be found in the wisdom he interlaces within every chapter. He begins with advice that he received in law school: “Where there is a right, there is a duty; where there is a privilege there is a responsibility,” he writes. “This correlative relationship is the key to my view of life.”

That Sandy Boyd shaped the quality of life in Iowa is without question. In this memoir he reminds us where we have been and where we are going. That is history at its finest.

— Reviewer Timothy Walch is director emeritus of the Hoover Presidential Library and a volunteer for the State Historical Society of Iowa.