Menu
Oberlin set for 'Cheyenne Autumn' showing
OBERLIN, Kan. -- On Wednesday, Sept. 21, the Decatur County Museum will host a Mini Sapa Celebration "Movie Night," at 7 p.m. at the Sunflower Cinema in downtown Oberlin, showing director John Ford's 1964 movie, "Cheyenne Autumn."
The movie follows the 1878 exodus of Northern Cheyenne Indians from a reservation in the Oklahoma territory toward their traditional homelands in Wyoming and Montana.
Free will donations will support both the cinema and the museum.
The next day, Thursday, Sept. 22, from noon until 1 p.m., Steve Ervin (Yellowbird) of Cambridge will be the guest speaker at a special Decatur County Museum "Brown Bag and Learn" presentation in the Bohemian Hall on the museum complex on South Penn Avenue in downtown Oberlin.
Ervin will present information about the last Indian raid in Kansas, on Sept. 30, 1878, through the eyes of the Northern Cheyenne Indians fleeing starvation and certain death on the Oklahoma territory reservation. "As you know, there ARE two sides to every story or event ... " Ervin says.
On Wednesday, Oct. 19, the museum will host a "History Buffs Book Club" meeting to study Mari Sandoz' book, "Cheyenne Autumn," which inspired Ford's movie.
The book club will meet from 6:30 p.m. until 8 p.m., in the Museum Parlor; anyone who likes to read and loves history is invited to attend. Books will be available at the museum on Tuesday, Oct. 4.
About Sandoz' epic novel "Cheyenne Autumn," the Chicago Sunday Tribune wrote: "Actually, Mari Sandoz does more than just tell the story. With her customary skill, she manages to recreate a man, a scene, an event, a page from history, so that through her prose this great story of the struggle of a small band of homesick, mistreated, half-starved Indians against the military might of a major nation takes on the stature of an American epic."