Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of Behind The Man: John Laurie, Ruth Gorman, And The Indian Vote In Canada. By Ruth Gorman., Laurie Meijer Drees

Great Plains Quarterly

Ruth Gorman was a powerful person. When I encountered her in the early 1990s at her home in Calgary I was immediately impressed with her indomitable spirit. At that time she was engrossed in writing a biography of her dear friend John Laurie. Her writing task was complex, and yet she was clearly driven to complete it. The end result of her tremendous effort is Behind the Man, part biography of John Laurie, part personal memoir, and part history of midcentury Alberta and Laurie and Gorman's work advocating civil rights for Canada's Indian peoples. Frits Pannekoek and his editorial …

Review Of Willa Cather: New Facts, New Glimpses, Revisions Edited By John J. Murphy And Merrill Maguire Skaggs, John N. Swift

Great Plains Quarterly

In 2005 Drew University's Library opened its newly developed Willa Cather Collection to a national Colloquium of Cather scholars. At the request of the Colloquium's organizer, the late Merrill Maguire Skaggs, each selected some interesting object-a manuscript fragment, an exchange of letters, an illustrationas the point of departure for further research, analysis, or speculation. Willa Cather: New Facts, New Glimpses, Revisions, a set of twenty brief essays and a meticulously annotated "Willa Cather Collection Finding Aid," is the project's result.

Unsurprisingly, the essays present a broad, disorderly range of approach and subject matter. They include few very startling discoveries: …

Review Of Twentieth-Century Texas: A Social And Cultural History. Edited By John W. Storey And Mary L. Kelley, Tom Wagy

Great Plains Quarterly

"Given such a large body of scholarship," editors John W. Storey and Mary L. Kelley admit, "another study of Texas seems hardly necessary." Nevertheless, they contend, Twentieth Century Texas: A Social and Cultural History (a collection of fifteen essays) fills a weakness in the Lone Star State's history bibliography, arguing that social and cultural subjects have received "short shrift" in survey texts. Moreover, Storey and Kelly justify their volume because "it focuses solely on the past century, bringing the story up-to-date."

All students of Texas's past will enjoy this collection. Summary histories of Mexican Texans, blacks, women, literature, education, and …

Review Of Kiowa Humanity And The Invasion Of The State By Jacki Thompson Rand, Nathan Wilson

Great Plains Quarterly

Focusing on the Southern Plains in the nineteenth century, Jacki Rand proposes a study on Kiowa responses to military invasion and the reservation system as a colonized people reacting against a colonizing agent. Additionally, Rand alludes to her investigation yielding new insight as Kiowa reactions to colonialism were in essence covert strategies of adaptation and maintaining traditional cultural values in the face of repeated onslaught. For some, however, this argument will fall somewhat short of these goals.

One of the difficulties in assessing the contribution of Rand's study is determining its projected audience. She begins her narrative with a jargoned …

Review Of The Line From Here To There: A Storyteller's Scottish West Texas By Rosanna Taylor Herndon, Allan O. Kownslar

Great Plains Quarterly

Memoirs are very popular these days, and this is a good one. Rosanna Taylor Herndon, a retired communications professor from Hardin-Simmons University and a professional storyteller, combines her storytelling with a collection of eighteen anecdotes about her Scottish family members in West Texas primarily during the Great Depression. She reveals the poverty people endured and the compassion they exhibited toward one another and others in similar situations. Each story comprises a unique setting, character development, and action regarding life during that time in the southern Great Plains.

Among the examples Herndon offers is "The Panhandle Is Coming," which recounts the …

"Daughters Of British Blood" Or "Hordes Of Men Of Alien Race" The Homesteads-For-Women Campaign In Western Canada, Sarah Carter

Great Plains Quarterly

In May 1910 Mildred Williams, a young teacher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, made headlines across Western Canada for her pluck and stamina as she waited for twelve days and nights on a chair on the stairs outside the door of the land office in Saskatoon to claim a homestead (see Fig. 1). She was determined to file on a half-section (320 acres) of valuable land near Kindersley. Williams put up with a great deal of inconvenience during her days and nights on the stairs. On the second day she was challenged by a man who wanted the same property and who …

Body Size And Predatory Performance In Wolves: Is Bigger Better?, Daniel R. Macnulty, Douglas W. Smith, L. David Mech, Lynn E. Eberly

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Summary

1. Large body size hinders locomotor performance in ways that may lead to trade-offs in predator foraging ability that limit the net predatory benefit of larger size. For example, size-related improvements in handling prey may come at the expense of pursuing prey and thus negate any enhancement in overall predatory performance due to increasing size.

2. This hypothesis was tested with longitudinal data from repeated observations of 94 individually known wolves (Canis lupus) hunting elk (Cervus elaphus) in Yellowstone National Park, USA. Wolf size was estimated from an individually based sex-specific growth model derived from …

Wolf Use Of Summer Territory In Northeastern Minnesota, Dominic J. Demma, L. David Mech

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Movements of wolves (Canis lupus) during summer 2003 and 2004 in the Superior National Forest were based around homesites but included extensive use of territories. Away from homesites, wolves used different areas daily, exhibiting rotational use. Mean daily range overlap was 22% (SE = 0.02) and that of breeding wolves was significantly greater than for nonbreeders (x = 25% and 16%, respectively). Rotational use may improve hunting success. Managers seeking to remove entire packs must maintain control long enough to ensure that all pack members are targeted.

Vulnerability Of Rehabilitated Agricultural Production Systems To Invasion By Nontarget Plant Species, Sara G. Baer, David M. Engle, Johannes M. H. Knops, Kenneth A. Langeland, Bruce D. Maxwell, Fabian D. Menalled, Amy J. Symstad

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Vast areas of arable land have been retired from crop production and ‘‘rehabilitated’’ to improved system states through landowner incentive programs in the United States (e.g., Conservation and Wetland Reserve Programs), as well as Europe (i.e., Agri-Environment Schemes). Our review of studies conducted on invasion of rehabilitated agricultural production systems by nontarget species elucidates several factors that may increase the vulnerability of these systems to invasion. These systems often exist in highly fragmented and agriculturally dominated landscapes, where propagule sources of target species for colonization may be limited, and are established under conditions where legacies of past disturbance persist and …

Archeological Interpretation Of The Frontier Battle At Mud Springs, Nebraska, Peter Bleed, Douglas D. Scott

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Between February 4 and 7, 1865, Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho warriors engaged a force of U.S. Army soldiers at Mud Springs, Nebraska. Historical records from both sides indicate that this fight marked an early phase of the Indian Wars. Based on systematic metal detections, firearms identification, and terrain analysis, this paper adds archeological insights into the arms and tactics used by the opposing sides. Well-armed Native fighters used terrain to approach U.S. troops, who maintained a defensive posture. U.S. soldiers appear to have dug a rifle pit to see approaching attackers.

Book Review: Rights In The Balance: Free Press, Fair Trial, And Nebraska Press Association V. Stuart. By Mark R. Scherer, G. Michael Fenner

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart establishes the public’s right to attend criminal trials and the right of the press to attend on behalf of the the public that cannot, or chooses not, to do so. There shall be no Star Chamber in the United States. We shall know how our judges and prosecutors operate. We shall know what goes on inside the courtroom, for the doors shall be open.

Mark Scherer has succeeded in making this narrative of constitutional brainstorming, brief writing, and appellate arguing most exciting. It is a story well told. My hope is that he’s sitting at …

Book Review: The Alberta Supreme Court At 100: History & Authority Edited By Jonathan Swainger, James Muir

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The book is a collection nine essays, five of which attempt to cover the whole or much of the last 100 years for a specific topic (constitutional, family, water, energy, and property law) through the identification of important or exemplary cases. The other four focus on either shorter time periods (a study of the makeup of the bench in its earliest years or the court’s treatment of women’s issues since the 1970s) or on only a pair of cases (over conscription during the First World War or Native hunting rights). There are large areas of law left out of this …

Review Of "Lynching To Belong: Claiming Whiteness Through Racial Violence," By Cynthia Skove Nevels, Alwyn Barr

Great Plains Quarterly

From the Civil War to the early twentieth century the growing population of Brazos County, Texas included about equal numbers of white and black southerners. That division contributed to tense political campaigns between Democrats and Republicans as well as acts of political and racial violence. Among new settlers came Bohemian, Irish, and Italian immigrants. Anglos did not immediately accept them as white because of cultural differences. The immigrants sought white status in several ways, including racial violence.

In 1896 a mob seized three African Americans from jail and hanged them. Two had been accused of assaulting a white girl. The …

Review Of "North American Indians In The Great War." By Susan Applegate Krouse, Thomas A. Britten

Great Plains Quarterly

Anthropologist Susan Applegate Krouse employs the records of Joseph Kossuth Dixon to shed light on the experiences of American Indian servicemen during the First World War. A former Baptist preacher, Dixon waged a twodecade- long campaign before and after WWI to preserve a record of Indian cultures and traditions before Native Americans "vanished" as distinctive peoples. To this end, Dixon traveled extensively to photograph and film reservation Indians, at times choreographing or staging scenes that fit his somewhat romanticized view of indigenous life. On the eve of the U.S. entry into WWI, he argued for the creation of segregated Indian …

Review Of "The Cypress Hills: An Island By Itself." By Walter Hildebrandt And Brian Hubner, George Colpitts

Great Plains Quarterly

The Cypress Hills, rising as outliers in the northern portion of the Missouri Coteau and dominating the mixed xeric grasslands of southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, have a vast human story of their own. They are certainly worthy of their own history book. This new edition of Hildebrandt and Hubner's 1994 book has been "rewritten and reshaped" to retell the story of the prehistory, aboriginal, early trade, and mounted police history of the region. Originally serving as historians and guides of the Fort Walsh National Historic Site, the authors were well placed to provide it. The Cypress Hills presents a …

Review Of "Forty Acres And A Fool: How To Live In The Country And Still Keep Your Sanity." By Roger Welsch, Gwendolyn K. Meister

Great Plains Quarterly

These recent books by longtime Nebraska author, folklorist, and humorist Roger Welsch examine life in the Great Plains from two quite different perspectives. Forty Acres and a Fool, ostensibly a how-to book on moving to the country, is written in a personal, conversational style from the start. In the introduction Welsch relates the story of his own physical (and mental) relocation to Dannebrog, a village of 352 in central Nebraska. Although the book offers practical advice on everything from moving buildings to fitting in with the social life of one's chosen rural community, it feels essentially like sitting down …

Review Of "Nuclear Nebraska: The Remarkable Story Of The Little County That Couldn't Be Bought." By Susan Cragin., Francis Moul

Great Plains Quarterly

For nearly twenty-five years after Congress passed the 1980 Federal Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act, Nebraska was torn by controversy over where a waste dump should be spotted in the state. The final act came in 2005, when Nebraska sent $146 million in damages to the five-state Central Compact Commission in charge of constructing the facility. Nothing was built.

Susan Cragin's book is a highly readable, well-researched, and very one-sided look at the uproar that cost all those millions of dollars, left a small Great Plains county irredeemably split, and caused years of newspaper headlines, angry meetings and hearings, and …

Review Of "Charles M. Russell: A Catalogue Raisonne." Edited By B. Byron Price., Joan Carpenter Troccoli

Great Plains Quarterly

No one painted the majestic mountains of Montana more splendidly than Charles M. Russell, but most of the action in his art, played out among the cowboys of the open range and the Native peoples of the Northern Plains, unfolds on the flat. Thanks to the comprehensive electronic catalogue of Russell's paintings, drawings, watercolors, models in mixed mediums, and illustrated letters available with this print publication, the reader can verify these assertions without tipping a single book off the library shelf.

Catalogues raisonnes have always stimulated the discovery of lost works and the reattribution and redating of others, and such …

Review Of "White Man's Paper Trail: Grand Councils And Treaty-Making On The Central Plains." By Stan Hoig, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly

This is a strange book, in part because the author does not seem to recognize the massive amount of scholarship available on the topic of Indian treaties that has accumulated in the last thirty years. Mostly limited to works published before 1970, its bibliography highlights the problems arising from minimal familiarity with recent research.

The book itself claims to be a unique narrative about the treaty councils of the Central Plains. In reality, it is not unique, and its coverage spans an area from Texas to Montana. The Southern Plains are a particular emphasis and fit the author's expertise. The …

Jim, Antonia, And The Wolves Displacement In Cather's My Antonia, Robin Cohen

Great Plains Quarterly

In one of the most frequently noted incidents in Willa Cather's My Antonia, Russian immigrant Pavel reveals on his deathbed that, when driving his friend's wedding party sledge, he saved his own life and companion Peter's by throwing the bride and groom to the attacking wolves. Antonia and Jim are fascinated by this story, and readers are haunted and intrigued by it. The tale holds the obvious appeal (both for the children and Cather's reader) of the drama of the incident, the color of its remote foreign setting, and the morbid satisfaction of learning the mysterious past of the …

Review Of "The Choctaws In Oklahoma: From Tribe To Nation, 1855-1970." By Clara Sue Kidwell, Robert Keith Collins

Great Plains Quarterly

Scholars of anthropology (particularly historical anthropology), history, and Native American studies interested in Choctaw history, cultural changes, everyday life choices, and contributions to American culture should find The Choctaws in Oklahoma: From Tribe to Nation, 1855-1970 and How Choctaws Invented Civilization and Why Choctaws Will Conquer the World important new contributions to the historical literature articulated by strong Choctaw voices. And readers interested in the complexities of Choctaw life in the Southern Plains, how Choctaws interacted with the region's other Indigenous groups (e.g., Kiowas and Comanches), and the inconsistencies between federal policies and Choctaw lived realities over time will be …

Notes And News- Winter 2009

Great Plains Quarterly

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Title And Contents

Great Plains Quarterly

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 29 / Number 1 / Winter 2009

THE METHODISTS' GREAT 1869 CAMP MEETING AND ABORIGINAL CONSERVATION STRATEGIES IN THE NORTH SASKATCHEWAN RIVER VALLEY

"YOU HAVE TO BE INVOLVED ... TO PLAY A PART IN IT": ASSESSING KAINAI ATTITUDES ABOUT VOTING IN CANADIAN ELECTIONS

JIM, ANTONIA, AND THE WOLVES: DISPLACEMENT IN CATHER'S MY ANTONIA

REVIEW ESSAY: WHAT'S CHOCTAW HISTORY-AND WHO GETS TO SAY?

BOOK REVIEWS

NOTES AND NEWS

Review Of "William Clark: Indian Diplomat." By Jay H. Buckley., University Of California, Los Angeles And Autry Institute For The Study Of The American West

Great Plains Quarterly

For decades, radio commentator Paul Harvey broadcast a program called "The Rest of the Story." Six times a week, Harvey recounted stories that put a surprising twist on familiar episodes. Often the rest of the story involved constructing epilogues that followed the careers of well-known persons after they had left the spotlight. In some ways Jay Buckley's study of William Clark can be seen as a contribution to Harvey's series. Although the book includes chapters on Clark's earlier life and his cocaptaincy of the Corps of Discovery, threequarters of it involves what Clark did after he came back from that …

Review Of Dark Storm Moving West, By Barbara Belyea, Arn Keeling

Great Plains Quarterly

In the freshet of scholarly and popular studies accompanying the recent bicentennials of Lewis and Clark's and David Thompson's westward explorations, Dark Storm Moving West forms an eddy of reflection on the practical, communicative, and philosophical challenges of understanding Euro-American exploration in western North America. English professor turned exploration historian Barbara Belyea eschews traditional narratives or grand theses in favor of dense rumination on particular episodes, personalities, and questions. Swirling and riffled at the surface, these waters yet find more subtle coherences in their depths than Belyea herself admits.

Her essays are focused loosely on the figure of Peter Fidler, …

Review Of Native America, Discovered And Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, And Manifest Destiny. By Robert J. Miller, Jenry Morsman

Great Plains Quarterly

In recent decades, scholars have reshaped our understanding of conquest, and as a result the idea of conquest is an unsettling one. Robert J. Miller's original and important work should launch a similar transformation for the idea of discovery. Associate Professor at the Lewis & Clark Law School and Chief Justice, Court of Appeals, Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde Community of Oregon, Miller persuasively argues that the principle of international law known as the Doctrine of Discovery provided the legal rationale and framework for the westward expansion of the United States. It, too, he argues, accounts for …

Review Of Reclaiming Charles Weidman (1901-1975): An American Dancer's Life And Legacy By Jonette Lancos, Ronald J. Zank

Great Plains Quarterly

Through her extensive study, Jonette Lancos rectifies the historical neglect of modern dance pioneer and Nebraska native Charles Weidman. Perhaps overshadowed by the greater attention accorded his partner and collaborator Doris Humphrey, with whom Weidman established the Humphrey-Weidman Company and School, Weidman has not been the focus of a critical biography until now. Without denying the importance of Humphrey's influence, Lancos seeks to examine other influences on Weidman's work and to explore his individual achievements.

Lancos begins with an overview of Weidman's career, framed by excerpts from his essay written as a ninth-grader in Lincoln, Nebraska. Then Weidman's family history …

Deathscapes, Topocide, Domicide The Plains In Contemporary Print Media, Christina E. Dando

Great Plains Quarterly

The American print media are a powerful mechanism for communicating information about places and environment to the American public. When it comes to a landscape such as the Great Plains, experienced by many Americans as either sleep-through land in a car or flyover land in a plane, the print media may be their only real source of information about this landscape, excluding 30 second soundbites which occasionally appear in electronic media. Often perceived as monotonous or dull, the Plains has been overlaid with powerful images, of garden or desert, of Dust Bowl or Buffalo Commons. But recent media coverage of …

Review Of Chevato: The Story Of The Apache Warrior Who Captured Herman Lehmann. By William Chebahtah And Nancy Mcgown Minor, Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola

Great Plains Quarterly

This fascinating book foregrounds the oral history of Chevato (Billy Chiwat), a Lipan Apache who in May 1870 captured eleven-yearold Herman Lehmann near Fredericksburg, Texas. Orphaned when young, Chevato joined the Mescalero Apaches, who were the ones actually responsible for the kidnapping of Herman and his brother Willie. In middle age, through the influence of the powerful Comanche Quanah Parker, Chevato became a Comanche and moved to Oklahoma where he lived until his death in 1931.

Non-Native captivity narratives, which have been a familiar part of American culture for centuries, usually focus on the crystallizing events of captivity and do …

Review Of African Creeks: Estelvste And The Creek Nation. By Gary Zellar, Robbie Ethridge

Great Plains Quarterly

Estelvste, or "black people," in the Creek Indian language, are the subjects of this well-written, absorbing story of the people of African descent whose lot in life cast them with the Creek Indians of present-day Georgia and Alabama and, after Indian Removal, present- day Oklahoma. Gary Zellar refers to them as African Creeks, distinguishing this particular population from both African Americans, Euro-American Creeks, and Indian Creeks. Such distinctions are necessary to the history of the Creek Indians because, after European contact, Creek lives became irreversibly and forever blended with those of the immigrant populations, yet the Creeks themselves adhered …