The Red Cloud Chief (Red Cloud, Webster Co., Neb.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,227 issues from 1873 to 1922, published in Red Cloud, Nebraska, digitised for Chronicling America.
The city of Red Cloud, Nebraska, is notable both for its namesake and for its well- known resident, the author Willa Cather. The city, situated in Webster County, was named for the Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud, who led a successful offensive against the U. S. Army in 1866 and signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. The city’s first newspaper, the Red Cloud Chief (1873-1923) focused on the development of this heavily rural community. Founding publisher and editor, C. L. Mather, sold its operation in 1875 to Mark Warner, who eventually sold it to M. L. Thomas. Thomas ran it during a deadly 1879 summer storm. “The rain fell in torrents, and the wind blew a hurricane, eddying and whirling about, blowing down some buildings and unroofing others. A great many buildings were leveled to the ground, and the only way their occupants were saved was by flying to their cellars,” said one account. The newspaper’s offices were heavily damaged.
The Chief published some early contributions from Willa Cather, who had spent much of her childhood there since age ten, having moved from Virginia in 1883. Cather’s childhood memories influenced her fiction writing. The city’s official website states that “Cather has immortalized this small community and Webster County in her writings. The Red Cloud of her youth is the setting of many of her works . . . [it] appears as Hanover, Moonstone, Black Hawk, Frankfort, Sweetwater, and Haverford.”
While initially the paper had a Republican stance, a…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress