What do James Russell Lowell, Edward Greenleaf Whittier, and Longfellow all have in common? Apart from being renowned poets, they all had the pleasure of sharing company with Wild Rose, also known as Anna Dawson, a young Boston socialite and a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes. She would later become an activist during the relocations caused by the Garrison Dam.
How did a young Native American girl come to know some of America’s great poets? Anna’s life on the East Coast began when she and her mother attended the Hampton Institute in Virginia, the only government-operated school for Native Americans at the time. She then went on to a school in Framingham, Massachusetts, where she became acquainted with Alice Longfellow, the daughter of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Through Alice, Anna became a member of Boston’s “Back Bay” society and met the literati and socialites of the day. But Anna had other obligations, and her “Back Bay” social life would soon come to an end. She returned home to teach on the reservation before returning to the East Coast for two more years to finish her schooling. After returning to North Dakota for good, she married Byron Wilde.
On this date in 1946, when Byron was in Washington, D.C. negotiating for land to replace property flooded by the Garrison Dam, Anna stayed behind to pray for a successful mission. The Bismarck Tribune reported, “If Indians on the Fort Berthold reservation don’t get a square deal in their negotiations…it will not be because they didn’t pray for it.”
Byron’s trip to Washington prompted the paper to also report on Anna, a woman the Tribune described as “an unusual person who has had experiences that few, if any, North Dakotans can match. Who else from this state, for example, had entree to the cream of Boston society in the 1890s, and what other North Dakotan hobnobbed with such literary greats as James Russell Lowell, Edward Greenleaf Whittier, and the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes, famed ‘Autocrat of the Breakfast Table’? Mrs. Wilde met and knew them all.”
Proud of her culture, Anna Wilde remained dedicated to preserving the traditions of her people. So on this date in 1946, she prayed for her husband—and for that “square deal”—so that her people might not lose their land.
Dakota Datebook by Tessa Sandstrom
Sources:
- “Same Dam Story,” Sanish Sentinel, 12 Dec. 1946.
- “Indian, friend of famous poets, fights Garrison Dam,” Bismarck Tribune, 21 Dec. 1946.
- Brudvig, Jon L. Ph.D. Hampton Normal & Agricultural Institutes American Indian Students, 1878-1923 / Compiled and edited from American Indian student files held in the archives of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia.. c1994, 1996. Original location: http://www.umary.edu/~jlbrud/Hampton/HUINDBIO.htm
