Stanley Vestal

Stanley Vestal (born August 15, 1887 in Severy , Kansas , † December 25, 1957 in Oklahoma City , Oklahoma ), who later bore the name Walter Stanley Campbell , was an American writer, poet and historian. The subject of his publications (in over twenty non-fiction books, some novels and countless articles) was predominantly the history of the American West in the 19th century.

Streak of life

Stanley Vestal's birthplace Severy in Kansas, a village with a few hundred souls, was in Greenwood County , the name of which is not derived from the landscape, but from the American politician Alfred B. Greenwood . The father, Walter Mallory Vestal, died very early, and when the mother remarried, young Stanley took the name of his stepfather, James Robert Campbell. In 1898 the Kansas family left and moved to Oklahoma, first to Guthrie and in 1903 to Weatherford , Custer County , where James Robert Campbell had become president of Southwestern State College . Stanley Vestal graduated from the same university in 1908 and then received a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University in England, where he studied English from 1908 to 1911 and then again (by telephone probably) in 1915 and earned two academic degrees. Between the two courses at Oxford , Vestal himself taught at a high school for boys in Louisville . In 1915 he received a professorship in English at the University of Oklahoma , which he held until his death in 1957. Two events shaped the year 1917 for him: entering into a marriage with a certain Isabel Jones and taking up his military service in the US army. The marriage resulted in two daughters. The military service, in which he was last captain in an artillery regiment, ended in 1919.

In 1927, Stanley Vestal published his first book, which was to be followed by about thirty more. This great creative joy may also have something to do with the subject of his work that must have preoccupied him very early: the American West, the investigation of its many historical events and connections. From a literary point of view, Vestal was more of a historical writer than a poet, which is reflected in the majority of non-fiction books. He carried out extensive research into the various subjects in his books, and not only of an academic nature, but was also out in the "dust of the world", looking around and researching. He probably stayed most of the time with the Lakota - Sioux , recording and exploring a lot there. - As early as 1911 in Louisville, he had met Frederick Weygold , a painter and ethnographer who had lived for a long time among the Sioux and who had a deep knowledge of their life and culture. This encounter resulted in both a business and a friendly relationship. Weygold later illustrated Vestal's book Happy Hunting Grounds . In contrast to most of their compatriots at the time, these two men had a positive image of the Indians, which had formed in them through factual research and not out of a romantic feeling. Probably a fortunate circumstance for Vestal here was that in his youth in Weatherford he had had many young Cheyennes as playmates who must have been sympathetic to him. - In addition to the well-known Sitting Bull , Stanley Vestal also dealt with the lesser-known White Bull , another Lakota chief whom he had even met personally and who probably killed Custer in the Battle of Little Bighorn , which Vestal said in his publications proved credible about this connection, to which he had also consulted an autobiography by White Bull, together with a number of pictures which this Indian had drawn quite artistically. Other topics in Vestals' descriptions included American trappers such as Kit Carson or Jim Bridger ; the cattle town of Dodge City ("the wickedest little city of America"); the Santa Fe Trail . He also wrote some poetry and many articles and essays in newspapers and books and, as a professor of English, which he still was, four textbooks for good writing .

Stanley Vestal died on December 25, 1957 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was buried in the Custer National Cemetery in the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana .

Non-fiction

• Stanley Vestal: Kit Carson. The Happy Warrior of the West , published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1928 (digital copy)
• Stanley Vestal: The Old Santa Fe Trail , published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1939
• Stanley Vestal: Short Grass Country , Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1941
• Stanley Vestal: Big Foot Wallace , Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1942
• Stanley Vestal: Dodge City. Queen of Cowtowns , published by Harper Brothers, New York 1952
• Stanley Vestal: Jim Bridger. Montain Man , published by the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1970
• Stanley Vestal: Warpath. The True Story of the Sioux Wars (report with an autobiography by White Bull), Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1934
• Stanley Vestal: New Sources of Indian History, 1850-1891; the Ghost Dance- the Prarie Sioux ... , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1934
• John H. Seger; Stanley Vestal: Early days among the Cheyennes and Arapaho Indians , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1934
• Stanley Vestal: Warpath and Council Fire; the Plains Indians for Survival ... , Random House, New York 1948
• Stanley Vestal: Sitting Bull. Champion of the Sioux , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1957 (digitized version)

Specialist literature

• Stanley Vestal: Professional Writing , The Macmillan Company, New York 1938
• Stanley Vestal: Writing Magazine Fiction , Doubleday, Doran & Company, New York 1940
• Stanley Vestal: Writing Non-Fiction , The Writer, Boston 1944
• Stanley Vestal: The book lover's southwest , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1955
• Reginald Laubin , Gladys Laubin: The Indian Tipi: Its History, Construction, and Use , with a History of the Tipi by Stanley Vestal, Verlag University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1957

Fiction

• Stanley Vestal: Fandango. Ballads of the Old West , published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1927
• Stanley Vestal: The Wine Room Murder , published by Little, Brown & Co, Boston 1938
• Stanley Vestal: Revolt On The Border , published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1938
• Stanley Vestal: Happy Hunting Grounds , Lyons and Carnahan Publishing, Chicago 1938
• Stanley Vestal: Happy hunting grounds , Walter-Verlag, Olten 1960

Web links

• Literature by and about Stanley Vestal in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• The University of Oklahoma (manuscripts, correspondence)
• The University of Oklahoma Libraries (drawings White Bull)
• The University of Oklahoma Libraries (photographs)
• Poetry Foundation (some lyric)