Today is the official release of Rainy River Lives, the text of which was written nearly 100 years ago, and which almost never saw publication.

In 1932 anthropologist Ruth Landes arrived at the Manitou Rapids Reserve on the Rainy River, which flows along the Ontario-Minnesota border, to conduct her doctoral research. There, Landes met Maggie Wilson, who became both a friend and an invaluable source. Wilson, a traditional Ojibwe storyteller, described to Landes what life was like on the reservation during the early 20th century, as the Ojibwes were being relocated and forced to assimilate. After Landes left the reservation, she and Wilson continued to correspond, and Wilson sent her many letters describing her life and the lives of her neighbors on Rainy River.

Landes carefully filed and saved the letters, but somehow, they got lost. Decades later, they were discovered in the basement of the Smithsonian Institute, where they had been misfiled with the papers of another anthropologist. Rainy River Lives, published, obviously, by the University of Nebraska Press, collects those stories for the first time.

An aside: Landes finished her doctorate in 1935 and became a well-known anthropologist, particularly in the fields of race and gender studies. Her 1947 book, City of Women, about women who adhered to the candomble religion in Brazil, is still in print.