American Studies Commons^™

Review Of Like No Other Place: The Sandhills Of Nebraska Photographs And Text By David A. Owen, Drake Hokanson

Great Plains Quarterly

Our collective understanding of place benefits greatly from the work of careful observers/ interpreters/writers/photographers who ultimately blend narrative and photographs into an explication of the nature of a region, a county, a town, a neighborhood, or a highway into a book of substance. Such books can bring us far more than straight geography, journalism, sociology, anthropology, or history can alone. Done right, the very cut of the wind and timbre of voices come through, making the place not only clear, but real.

Like No Other Place combines Owen's narrative about time, people, and place in the Nebraska Sandhills with his …

Review Of Julius Seyler And The Blackfeet: An Impressionist At Glacier National Park By William E. Farr, Alexandra Ganser

Great Plains Quarterly

The turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century saw the conclusion of the Great Northern Railway (1893) and the birth of Glacier National Park in Montana (1910), two events so tightly interrelated through the family of railroad tycoon James J. Hill and his son Louis W. Hill that they would come to be automatically associated in the minds of many twentieth-century Americans-especially the prospective middle-class tourists from the metropolitan East who were following the Hills' promotional exhortation to "See America First" and experience a tamed version of western wilderness at Glacier Park: outdoor adventure and close contact with what …

Review Of Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion Of Johnson County By John W. Davis, Ross F. Collins

Great Plains Quarterly

This book offers a thorough indictment of Wyoming Plains cattlemen at the end of the nineteenth century. It is worth asking if we really need another thorough indictment of a group so thoroughly indicted that one more thorough indictment seems like taking yet another swing at a worn-out punching bag. Yes, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association in 1892 was controlled by bad men whose arrogance was reflected in a ridiculous scheme doomed to failure. Asa Shinn Mercer told us that in Banditti of the Plains, published only two years after the Johnson County War. And much of his account …

Horacepoolaw Photographer,Mentor,Grandfather, Thomas Poolaw

Great Plains Quarterly

There are at least 2,000 silver nitrate negatives in the Horace Poolaw collection, and as many stories to go along with them. If you begin to talk about one image, it leads from that story to the next, and the next, and pretty soon two or three hours have gone by. Rather than discussing in detail the images in the Horace Poolaw collection, I would like to discuss Horace Poolaw the man-a complex yet loving individual who was much more than just a photographer. It is still difficult for me to talk about a person whose influence helped shape my …

Review Essay: Packing, Unpacking, And Repacking The Cinema Of Guy Maddin, George Melnyk

Great Plains Quarterly

Guy Maddin is Canada's most unusual filmmaker. He also happens to have a global cult following for his retro b&w films. His stature as a cult filmmaker began almost a quarter of a century ago, when his sophomore film, Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), was launched at a midnight screening in New York that drew audiences for a year. A Winnipegger by birth, he has become that city's most famous filmmaker and one of the few Canadian film directors with an international following. His New York debut led to a regular stint in the 1990s as a film commentator …

Review Of Literary Life: A Second Memoir By Larry Mcmurtry, Tom Pilkington

Great Plains Quarterly

Literary Life is the second entry of Larry McMurtry's projected trilogy of memoirs. The first, Books (2008), recalls his lifelong avocation as book scout, dealer, and eventually bookstore owner. The yet-to-be-published third, Hollywood, will relate his experiences as a screenwriter. Literary Life takes as its subject McMurtry's career as prolific writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove (1985).

Let it be said right off the bat that this slim volume is a mess, a lazy, sloppy collection of random memories that lacks anything resembling a coherent structure. Though it begins at the beginning-with the young McMurtry reading boys' …

Review Of Playing In Shadows: Texas And Negro League Baseball By Rob Fink, Pellom Mcdaniels Iii

Great Plains Quarterly

One of the most underappreciated aspects of American life and history is that of black baseball. Shortly after the invention of the game, African American men began playing as an expression of their status as middle-class professionals. These particular black men had access to leisure time and the disposable income necessary to acquire the proper equipment and pay the necessary fees to participate in organized play. During Reconstruction, formerly enslaved African American men who had been introduced to the game by Union soldiers used their ability to play the game as an expression of their independence, as well as a …

Review Of The Death Of Meriwether Lewis: A Historical Crime Scene Investigation By James E. Starrs And Kira Gale, James J. Holmberg

Great Plains Quarterly

Was the death of Meriwether Lewis at a backwoods inn on the Natchez Trace on October 11, 1809, suicide or murder? Those on the scene as well as those who knew him best, including Thomas Jefferson and William Clark, all pronounced it a suicide. But was it? Suicide stood as the accepted verdict until the 18408 when the report of the Lewis Monument Committee suggested it was murder. No evidence was given, but once the possibility was raised it grew in popularity and acceptance. Relying on evidence and emotion to reach a conclusion, the two sides in the suicide vs. …

Review Of Here You Have My Story: Eyewitness Accounts Of The Nineteenth-Century Central Plains Edited By Richard E. Jensen, Adam R. Hodge

Great Plains Quarterly

The history of the central Great Plains is at its heart a vast collection of stories about the complex interactions between humans and the grasslands. When American settlers during the nineteenth century ventured into what had hitherto been Indian country, they found that their fortunes were inextricably bound to the whims of the often harsh Plains environment. In Here You Have My Story: Eyewitness Accounts of the Nineteenth-Century Central Plains, readers have the opportunity to view the challenges and triumphs of settling the Plains of present day Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming through the eyes of those who were …

Review Of Hancock's War: Conflict On The Southern Plains By William Y. Chalfant, Steven C. Haack

Great Plains Quarterly

Major General Winfield Scott Hancock headed west from Fort Riley in late March of 1867, well prepared to engage the Cheyennes in western Kansas. Seven companies of infantry, eight of cavalry, and an artillery battery accompanied him. A man with political ambitions, he also brought the press along to publicize his efforts. Hancock had neither knowledge nor curiosity about the culture of the people he sought. He wanted to fight them. "I think it would be to our advantage to have these Indians refuse the demands I intend to make, a war with the Cheyennes would answer our purpose."

Traveling …

Review Of American Indians And The Fight For Equal Voting Rights By Laughlin Mcdonald, Matthew L. M. Fletcher

Great Plains Quarterly

The continuing relevance of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act in the Deep South is an open question for many people, but the importance of the Act in Indian Country cannot seriously be questioned. Laughlin McDonald's powerful book provides a frontline view of the cases brought by American Indians in Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and elsewhere. McDonald, the head of the ACLO's Voting Rights Project, himself litigated these cases to successful conclusion on behalf of his Native clients.

In parts of the United States, many state and local governments quietly excluded Indian people from the suffrage until after World War …

Review Of Native American Performance And Representation Edited By S. E. Wilmer, T. Christopher Aplin

Great Plains Quarterly

Modern Native American artistic performances originated in the widespread North American ceremonial complexes that combined community-based oral tradition and musical practice with the visual performative arts. Growing out of a 2002 "Ritual and Performance" workshop hosted by editor S. E. Wilmer, Native American Performance and Representation illuminates the links that bind American and Canadian Indigenous traditions to their correlate modernities, their diverse ceremonial rituals to expressive artistic performances. This edited volume casts its net broadly, attempting to "review and assess the changing nature of Native performance strategies in a multicultural society." But it essentially focuses on post-1960s theatrical performances and …

Modernity, Multiples, And Masculinity Horace Poolaw's Postcards Of Elder Kiowa Men, Laura E. Smith

Great Plains Quarterly

Many Indians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century commodified aspects of their cultures in order to make a living and sometimes present their identities, history, and artworks in ways that were satisfying to them. Ten vintage postcards from the Oklahoma Historical Society by Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw (1906-1984) indicate that he recognized popular tastes for Plains Indian male imagery while both participating in that production and working independently of it. Poolaw printed some of his photographs on postcard stock to sell at local fairs in the early to mid twentieth century. In order for the postcards to appeal …

Acting For The Camera Horace Poolaw's Film Stills Of Family, 1925-1950, Hadley Jerman

Great Plains Quarterly

During the late 1920s, American technology historian Lewis Mumford drafted these words in a manuscript that would become Technics and Civilization. At the same time, Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw began documenting daily life in southwestern Oklahoma with the very technology Mumford alleged altered the way humanity saw itself. As Poolaw began making dramatically posed, narrative-rich portraits of family members, Mumford asserted that the modern individual now viewed him or herself "as a public character, being watched" by others. He further suggested that humankind developed a "camera-eye" way of looking at the world and at oneself as if continuously on display. …

Some Thoughts On "Taking" Pictures Imaging "Indians" And The Counter-Narratives Of Visual Sovereignty, Morgan F. Bell

Great Plains Quarterly

Soon after its inception the camera became the primary vehicle for producing images of Native Americans. Without question, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century images of Native Americans have been integral in forming the stereotypical ideal of "Indian." For many imaginations, these images have frozen North America's indigenous people, not only in a timeless past but, in essence, outside time. This essay examines photographic images that illustrate this phenomenon and some that dismantle it. The fact that indigenous people picked up the camera long ago to commission and produce their own images, although long overlooked, is a topic that has received …

Review Of "I Do Not Apologize For The Length Of This Letter": The Mari Sandoz Letters On Native American Rights, 1940-1965 Introduced And Edited By Kimberli A. Lee, Alan Boye

Great Plains Quarterly

Novelist, historian, and biographer Mari Sandoz holds a unique position as an authority on the American West. She was born in 1896 in one of the last areas of the West to be settled by whites, the sparse and empty Nebraska Sandhills. Her father befriended many of the Sioux and Cheyennes from the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation. Sandoz grew up hearing the stories of people like He Dog, a close friend of Crazy Horse and brother-in-law of Red Cloud, Wild Hog, the Cheyenne warrior who played a crucial role in the Cheyenne Exodus, Short Bull, Old Cheyenne Woman, and others …

Review Of And Grace Will Lead Me Home: African American Freedmen Communities Of Austin, Texas, 1865-1928 By Michelle M. Mears, Maria Franklin

Great Plains Quarterly

Michelle Mears's book on the rural and urban freedmen settlements of Austin is a welcome contribution to the social history of African Americans in Texas. By considering postemancipation black lifeways at such a small scale, as few existing works do, it offers readers a more comprehensive view of the experiences, struggles, and accomplishments of African Americans within a specific historical context. Mears also achieves a good balance between discussing Austin's historic black communities and situating them within the social, economic, and political processes occurring more broadly within the state and the greater South.

Her research is meticulous, and scholars will …

Review Of Art As Performance, Story As Criticism: Reflections On Native Literary Aesthetics By Craig S. Womack, Mark Rifkin

Great Plains Quarterly

Art as Performance, Story as Criticism is a grand experiment. In it, Womack plays with the possibilities of critical form as well as analytic content. One of the commonplaces of Native literary studies is that knowledge is made through story, so artistic production should count as a means of studying the world. Following this line of thought, Womack here blends story with more conventional scholarship, creating a multilayered counterpoint that conveys more the sense of an opening to a conversation than the self-enclosure that can emanate from thesis-driven arguments. In this vein, the pieces collected here-ranging from new short …

Review Of Our Boys: A Perfect Season On The Plains With The Smith Center Redmen By Joe Drape, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly

The best book on Great Plains sports is H. G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights (1990). That classic has spawned a critically acclaimed television series and numerous awards. FNL not only told the story of a football season at Odessa Permian High School in urban West Texas; it also asked and answered some very big questions that concerned high school athletic corruption, coaching pressures, cheerleader/ football player interaction, school integration, local community politics, treatment of players of color, Texas's new rules prohibiting playing with failing grades, pressures on teachers, drugs, player abuse, and on and on. It remains a beautifully written …

Review Of Skylark Meets Meadowlark: Reimagining The Bird In British Romantic And Contemporary Native American Literature By Thomas C. Gannon, Frederick White

Great Plains Quarterly

Thomas Gannon's verve animates his investigation and contrast of avian images from British Romantic poets and Native American authors. In the introductory chapter, he provides a steadfast theoretical basis grounded in a syncretic psychological-ecotheory. In the next two chapters he meticulously constructs his view that the British Romantic poets' attempt to connect with nature, specifically birds, at the surface level seems accomplished but, with deeper pondering, falls far short of being convincing. Gannon exposes how western expression of nature cannot capture any essence of subject-subject, that is "I-Thou." The second and third chapters explore examples to show avian representation is …

Review Of Seldom Seen: A Journey Into The Great Plains By Patrick Dobson, Geitner Simmons

Great Plains Quarterly

The Great Plains often are dismissed as ho-hum fly-over country lacking in significance or appeal. But in the skillfully written narrative of Seldom Seen, Patrick Dobson describes how he finds the Plains a source of emotional sustenance and, ultimately, rejuvenation. Seldom Seen is the story of the author's trek, largely by foot, from Kansas City, Missouri, to Helena, Montana. Along the way Dobson-- a 32-year old blue-collar worker seeking relief from a variety of intense personal frustrations-meets a long string of open-hearted if often dirt-poor souls and comes to find hope in what he'd largely considered a "mean and …

Review Of The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army In The West, 1783-1900 By Robert Wooster, Mark R. Scherer

Great Plains Quarterly

Given the vast breadth and depth of American military historiography, well-organized and well-written narrative overviews of the field are always welcome. Robert Wooster's recently released The American Military Frontiers certainly fits that description. Wooster, a professor of history at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, and the author of four other books on western military history, synthesizes several generations of previous scholarship to support his most fundamental theme: that the Army served not only as the executor of nineteenth century national policy, but also as an important catalytic "shaper" of that policy. In its attention to the multiple roles played by …

Review Of Bleeding Borders: Race, Gender, And Violence In Pre-Civil War Kansas By Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, Michael D. Pierson

Great Plains Quarterly

Bleeding Kansas has long been an important topic for political historians exploring how it influenced Congress, presidential campaigns, and the coming of the Civil War. Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel's book uses the insights of recent social historians to add depth to this political narrative, thereby strengthening our understanding of how antebellum Kansas changed America.

Bleeding Borders begins with a chapter that positions Kansas as a frontier territory. Oertel's antebellum Kansans are divided by race, but not just between white and black. Starting her history in the 1820s, Oertel finds that "white settlers' perceptions of and interactions with Kansas Indians played a …

Review Of Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, And Healing By Jo-Ann Episkenew, Keavy Martin

Great Plains Quarterly

Metis scholar and activist Jo-Ann Episkenew examines the potential of literature to assist Canadian Indigenous communities in healing from the impacts of colonial government policy in this, her first scholarly monograph. While the discourse of "healing" has been a central feature of both bureaucratic and academic discussions of Indigenous issues since the 1990s, Episkenew's study appears at a time when the detrimental effects of policies like the residential school system are again gaining public attention as Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission gets underway. The book contains a useful overview of the government interventions that have impinged upon Indigenous peoples in …

Review Of No Place Like Home: Notes From A Western Life By Linda M. Hasselstrom, Gretchen Legler

Great Plains Quarterly

What's happening to Linda Hasselstrom's Great Plains is happening everywhere, even in western Maine, where New Yorkers migrate north, buying second houses in communities once home to lobstermen, farmers, and lumberjacks, changing the face of the social, political, and natural landscape. It's enough to make a person, well, want to let off some steam, and perhaps try to come to some conclusions about what is happening to land and community in America in general and in the Great Plains in particular, which is what Hasselstrom does in her newest work of nonfiction. In this collection of linked essays, she returns …

Review Of Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong By Paul Chaat Smith, Laura M. Furlan

Great Plains Quarterly

In his recent collection of essays, associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian Paul Chaat Smith argues for a reorientation of knowledge about Indian peoples. The essays, all previously published, are sometimes autobiographical, sometimes humorous, and range in topic from Ishi to the Alcatraz occupation. In "The Big Movie," for example, Smith takes on films that feature Indians, from the first moving picture made by Thomas Edison in 1894, Sioux Ghost Dance, to The Searchers, Last of the Mohicans, and Dances with Wolves. Indians, Smith writes, have become "a kind of national mascot." These …

Review Of The Indian Commissioners: Agents Of The State And Indian Policy In Canada's Prairie West, 1873-1932 By E. Brian Titley, George Colpitts

Great Plains Quarterly

E. Brian Titley's The Indian Commissioners makes a fine contribution to Great Plains history and, in Canadian studies, the shaping of western Indian policy. The case of Canada's Indian Commissioners, appointed from 1873 to 1909 and again between 1920 and 1932, is worthy of a single study. Titley's thesis is solidly argued: though responsible for putting into practice Ottawa's policies, the five Indian commissioners in the history of the service retained some latitude in carrying them out. Beneficiaries of party patronage, and often enjoying the confidence of either the Prime Minister or various Ministers of Interior, they had backing enough …

Review Of Historical Atlas Of The American West: With Original Maps By Derek Hayes, J. Clark Archer

Great Plains Quarterly

The Historical Atlas of the American West is a visually appealing and well-organized representation of cartographic works thoughtfully selected from several centuries of map making. As demarcated for the Atlas, the American West extends from the eastern borders of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas to the Pacific coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. While some of the included maps show the entire American West, most depict smaller subregions of interest such as one or a few states or even individual cities or towns. The cartographic scales, map themes, and graphical styles of the maps reproduced vary greatly, …

The American Imprint On Alberta Politics, Nelson Wiseman

Great Plains Quarterly

Characteristics assigned to America's classical liberal ideology-rugged individualism, market capitalism, egalitarianism in the sense of equality of opportunity, and fierce hostility toward centralized federalism and socialismare particularly appropriate for fathoming Alberta's political culture. In this article, I contend that Alberta's early American settlers were pivotal in shaping Alberta's political culture and that Albertans have demonstrated a particular affinity for American political ideas and movements. Alberta came to resemble the liberal society in Tocqueville's Democracy in America: high status was accorded the selfmade man, laissez-faire defined the economic order, and a multiplicity of religious sects competed in the market for …

Moneneheo And Naheverien Cheyenne And Mennonite Sewing Circles, Convergences And Conflicts, 1890-1970, Kimberly D. Schmidt

Great Plains Quarterly

Marie Gerber Petter was skeptical. Born in the Swiss Jura Mountains, she knew that one does not find water in high places. It was 1893 when Marie and her husband, Rodolphe Petter, came to North America for the express purpose of bringing Christianity to Native Americans. After studying English and visiting Mennonite churches in Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas to garner monetary support for their work among the Southern Cheyenne, they made the forty-mile journey from Darlington, Oklahoma Territory, to an area near present-day Hammon by covered wagon. She was in need of water. When she asked, the local Cheyenne chief, …