Abstract for 61st Annual Northern Great Plains History Conference

Earlier today I submitted my abstract to the listed coordinator for the 61st annual Northern Great Plains History Conference hosted this year at Montana State University from October 28-31, 2026. 

Abstract submission deadline is April 17, 2026. The link is here.  

My abstract is below👇🏼. We will see you this autumn in Bozeman:

An Irish-American Memory of Little Bighorn: Patrick Byrne’s 1926 Soldiers of the Plains

Abstract: In 1926, Patrick Byrne published Soldiers of the Plains, a book that introduced an Anglo-American readership to the Battle of Little Bighorn/Greasy Grass (LBG/GG) from a Native American perspective. Byrne deliberately published this work at the 50th observance of LBH/GG (1876-1926). As an orphaned Irish immigrant from Roscommon, Ireland, and a resident of Bismarck, Dakota Territory and later North Dakota, Byrne was intimately familiar with historical memory of nineteenth century colonization. He understood the nineteenth century Anglo-American attempted conquest of Northern Plains Tribes as analogous to the nineteenth century British imperial occupation and attempted colonization of Ireland. This paper explores the prologue to Byrne’s life that is the Irish potato famines, his emigration from Roscommon, Ireland to Bismarck, Dakota Territory, his professional experiences that led to his 1926 Soldiers of the Plains, and how his imprint throughout the Northern Plains persists to this day.