He traveled the plains and lived the land first-hand. Neihardt’s acquaintance with the Omaha and Winnebago Indians led him to an interest in the Sioux, their customs and traditions. Susan LaFlesche Picotte was the first Native American doctor, whose hospital still stands in the town of Walthill on the Omaha Reservation. Susette LaFlesche was the interpreter for the Ponca leader Standing Bear during the trial that first determined that an Indian is a person within the meaning of law. Neihardt was friends with the important LaFlesche family, descendants of Omaha Chief Estamahza (Iron Eyes) LaFlesche. They invited him into their lodges to share their way of life and learn their stories. Neihardt respected the traditions of the Omaha, and in return he earned their respect.
From 1901-1903 he was the owner-editor of the Bancroft Blade, and worked as a clerk for a trader on the Omaha Reservation. For a year he became the city reporter for the Omaha Daily News, a job for which he was ill-suited - he was a writer whose imagination often kept him preoccupied while other reporters tracked down scoops. He returned to that vocation when he moved to Bancroft in 1900, where his family moved when his sister got a teaching job. He was provided corn cobs for fuel and had to do the janitorial work himself. His first teaching job, at a country school, began in December 1898, at a rate of $30 a month for four months. He continued his education and got his Bachelor’s degree by completing the scientific program in 1897 at age 16. Neihardt graduated with his teaching degree at the age of 15, but was too young to teach. The first bell was at 6:30 a.m., and then twice every 50 minutes until 6:00 p.m., Monday-Friday. Pile recognized John’s precociousness and hired him as the campus bell ringer so that he could pay his tuition. One of her clients was the family of James Pile, first president of Nebraska Normal College (now Wayne State College).
While living in Wayne, John’s mother Alice worked as a seamstress.
But Neihardt himself pointed to a fever dream he had at age 12, in which he saw himself floating through space and felt the presence of a "spirit brother," as the event that determined his life work as a poet and inspired the content of that work.
This exposure to the richness and variety of life on the plains shaped the direction of his life work. He had also lived in a sod house in northwestern Kansas and in the Missouri River town of Kansas City. Born on January 8, 1881, in Sharpsburg, Illinois, to Nicholas and Alice Neihardt, 11-year-old John Neihardt moved to Wayne, Nebraska, in 1891, with his mother and two sisters.
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