October is American Archives Month. To celebrate, we are highlighting our staff around the country and their favorite records from the holdings in the National Archives. Today’s staff member is Christopher Magee, archivist with the National Archives at Kansas City. “The record I am highlighting is Law Case File #44, US v Tasunka-Ota alias Plenty Horses, filed at the U.S. District Court for Southern (Sioux Falls) Division of the District of South Dakota. This file means a lot to me as I was able to discover additional records relating to the case that we did not know we held. While writing an online catalog description for a journal listing law trials filed in Sioux Falls, I noticed a capital murder case being listed. This was strange as law case files are civil in nature. In looking through the journal to see if this was a unique occurrence or standard, I came across several more murder trials and eventually two trials listing Plenty Horses name. When I went out to the records, the two Sioux Falls cases were in the box waiting to be explored! The case was initially filed in Deadwood, and we knew about that case file. However, the records were very scant and did not go through the conclusion of the case. We did have the letter press journal documenting the trial, so we knew what had transpired. We just didnt know the link to the original case files. While working on Record Group 64 records, I even found researcher inquiries from the 1980s looking for these missing cases. Finding the original records for this case remains one of my highlight days at the National Archives.” Read a full description of the trial of Plenty Horses and these records at archives.gov/kansas-city/press/newsletter/2012-december.pdf. Images: Plenty Horses’ receipt for copies of the indictment, list of the jury, and list of the witnesses for his first trial. Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States. The verdict handed down by the jury in the first trial. Record Group 21, Records of the District Courts of the United States.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:00:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015