LETTER: Autograph Letter Signed "Clara Bewick Colby" to "rev. Dr. E.F. Strickland."
Autograph Letter Signed
with Poem
Colby, Clara Bewick. Autograph Letter Signed “Clara Bewick Colby” to “Rev. Dr. E. F. Strickland.” Beatrice, Neb. 03/03/1888; two leaves Colly’s personalized “The Woman’s Tribune” stationery; rectos only; unobstructive open tear at base of first leaf; pages creased where folded from mail.
Colby writes granting “Rev. Dr. Strickland” permission to use “the extract from a poem which embodies the history of this western country…” She goes on to explain the poem’s significance, entrenched in Native American history – mentioning “Wakan the Supreme,” Haokah the spirit of fire,” and “Waukeon the Spirit of progress,” among others.
She ends, “I send you these because they will be out of the usual line. But if you want a concise sentence of my own, here it is: the world needs your thinking.”
On the second page, Bewick transcribes her poem, which she notes under her name is “From ‘A Song of the Plains.’” The poem, in full, reads:
And thou, serene Unklahe[?], bless the earth
With thy continued rule; thy streams shall run
More swift and clear, thy dews more kindly fall;
The grass shall spring at thy approach,
And flowers bloom beneath thine airy tread.
And in the silent watches of the night
When though shalt whisper in the dreamer’s ear
To lofty enterprise and noble deeds
Thou shalt inspire lesser.
Lecturer and newspaper editor Clara Bewick Colby (1846-1916) was Nebraska’s most prominent suffragist. Born in England, Colby moved to Wisconsin in 1854 and attended the University of Wisconsin, graduating first in her class after taking classes that, before her enrollment, were accessible only to men. A supporter of both women’s rights and the rights of other minorities – including Native Americans – Colby and her husband adopted a Sioux Indian child in 1891. In the 1870s, she began traveling regularly as a suffrage speaker, working closely with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Anthony called Colby the best writer in the women’s movement.
The following decade, Colby published and edited The Woman’s Tribune, a national suffrage newspaper designed to bring women’s news to remote locations, which was for a time the official publication of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
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