This dissertation argues that it is time to push the understanding of the US Oceti Sakowin wars in different directions, particularly in the direction that stops obsessing and constantly revisiting the officer and soldier accounts. More particularly, it is argued, it is time to push in the direction that looks at how and why settler colonizers – scholars, artists, historians, poets – before and after the turn of the nineteenth century contemplated and argued over various ways to interpret the 1854- 1891 US Oceti Sakowin wars. Through this, they infused a sense of history into the landscape of the northern plains. The dialog they established created a foundation for how and why the US Oceti Sakowin wars is remembered today in the second decade of the twenty first century.