Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Notes & News

Great Plains Quarterly

SYMPOSIA: CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES (N. Scott Momaday; La Donna Harris; Peterson Zah; John W. Bennet)

FACES AND TYPEFACES (Warren W. Caldwell; John G. Peters)

MATCHING THE CHALLENGE GRANT

SOME NOTES FROM CANADA

TO APPEAR IN NOTES AND NEWS

Kansas Through The Eyes Of Kansans Preferences For Commonly Viewed Landscapes, Roxane Fridirci, Stephen E. White

Great Plains Quarterly

Kansas does not spring to most minds as possessing unique or picturesque landscapes. A study by the Ozark Regional Commission to help promote tourism in Kansas found that the state is generally perceived to be devoid of scenery and things to do. l Drab was a word used by several respondents. Some held outright negative images of Kansas; others had no image at all and no desire to visit the state.

Kansas inspires in outsiders a certain amount of respect for its mercurial weather, bumper grain harvests, and natural gas and oil deposits, but it has no spectacular mountains with …

A Review Of A Final Promise: The Campaign To Assimilate The Indians By Frederick E. Hoxie, Brian W. Dippie

Great Plains Quarterly

Frederick Hoxie's argument in A Final Promise is that there were two distinct phases to the government's assimilation program between 1880 and 1920, divided roughly at 1900. The first was an idealistic, internally consistent policy of fully incorporating the Indians into the American way of life as small landowners with citizenship rights and the equivalent of a common school education equals among equals, in short. The second phase saw a diminution of expectations and a growing perception, consistent with the segregationist forces active throughout American society, of the Indians as a permanent, backward minority in need of continuing government controls. …

Review Of Native Faces: Indian Cultures In American Art By Patricia Trenton And Patrick Houlihan, Patricia Trenton, Patrick Houlihan, Marsha V. Gallagher

Great Plains Quarterly

Native Faces is the catalogue to an exhibition of the same name presented at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles in 1984 and at Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum in 1985. The show featured late nineteenth and early twentieth century paintings of California, Southwest, and Plains Indian subjects by wellknown artists such as Joseph Sharp, Ernest Blumenschein and E. Irving Couse. The paintings were shown with related Indian artifacts and historic photographs. The catalogue focuses on sixteen of the paintings and their related material, with commentary on each by Patricia Trenton, an art historian, and Patrick Houlihan, an anthropologist.

Review Of The Reservation Blackfeet, 1882-1945: A Photographic History Of Cultural Survival By William E. Farr, Robert C. Carriker

Great Plains Quarterly

Tribal histories usually rely upon archival documents and oral traditions for source material. This book adds another source: the lens of a camera. The Reservation Blackfeet offers approximately 200 photographs as a reliable, visual record of tribal cultural change. "Here are windowpanes," suggests Professor William E. Farr of the University of Montana, "that looked out on the past ... [as] fixed, rectangular glimpses ... " Blackfeet tribal history is complex. Once the dominant tribe in present-day Montana, they were seduced into the white man's world during the buffalo robe trade of the 1830s. In 1855 they agreed to a sizeable …

Review Of An Unfailing Faith: A History Of The Saskatchewan Dairy Industry By Gordon C. Church, Kenneth Hill

Great Plains Quarterly

An Unfailing Faith will likely become the primary reference work on the development of the dairy industry in Saskatchewan. Considering its several hundred references and its comprehensive outline, it is unlikely that there exists or will appear a publication that covers the historical developments of the dairy industry so completely. The book contains a lot of local color, including pioneer living conditions on the prairies and early histories of cities, towns, attitudes, and operations of community leaders. Descendants of pioneer families will find much to supplement their memories and family histories, and readers of general Western lore will be pleased …

Review Of Views And Viewmakers Of Urban America: Lithographs Of Towns And Cities In The United States And Canada, Notes On The Artists And Publishers, And A Union Catalog Of Their Work, 1825-1925 By John W. Reps, Frederick C. Luebke

Great Plains Quarterly

John Reps, the foremost historian of urban planning in America, has accumulated through the years a mountain of information about the many bird's-eye views of cities and towns in the expanding America of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this remarkable volume, Reps organizes and systematizes his data to provide the definitive statement on these fascinating artifacts of American cultural history.

Review Of The Great Father: The United States Government And The American Indians,The Great White Father: The United States Government And The American Indian, And In His American Indian Policy In The Formative Years: The Indian Trade And Intercourse Acts, 1790-1834 (1962) By Francis Paul Prucha, Wilcomb E. Washburn

Great Plains Quarterly

In The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, Prucha provides a capstone to the edifice he began with American Indian Policy in the Formative Years. During his life as a scholar (principally at Marquette University) and as a Jesuit (he was ordained in 1957), he has remained unflappably calm, even when, as in the 1960s, radical students were outraged at his apparent defense of Andrew Jackson. In 1302 pages of this two-volume work (and 426 pages of the abridged edition) there is lacking "sparkle and simplicity." The lack of "sparkle" in Prucha's work derives not …

Rural Social Organization In A Semiarid African Country The Case Of Botswana, Louise Formann

Great Plains Quarterly

Environmental determinism has long been discredited in explaining the social organization of pastoral and agro-pastoral peoples. I Today the effect of climate on social organization is recognized as mediated by social, economic, and political factors. 2 Thus, social organization in Botswana reflects the influence of a wide variety of factors, among them Christian missionaries, interethnic warfare, past and continuing aggression of South Africa, introduction of the iron plow, British colonialism, Boer traders, discovery of minerals (most recently diamonds), international donor aid, and so on. Over the past century there have been substantial changes in a number of important trends: life …

Adapting The Environment Ranching, Irrigation, And Dry Land Farming In Southern Alberta, 1880-1914, A. A. Den Otter

Great Plains Quarterly

For centuries the nutritious grasses of the southwestern fringe of the Canadian prairies supported an abundance of game, providing ample food for its nomadic peoples. Not until the middle of the nineteenth century did anyone look to this area as a farming frontier. By the 1850s, however, the curiosity of Canadians about it was increased by a need for new territories for investment, scientific estimates that the land was more favorable for agriculture than had previously been believed, and the fiery rhetoric of expansionist journalists. The need for more accurate knowledge prompted the Canadian and British governments to send scientific …

Review Of ] Effason And Southwestern Exploration: The Freeman And Custis Accounts Of The Red River Expedition Of 1806 Ed. By Dan L. Flores, James P. Ronda

Great Plains Quarterly

The Freeman-Custis expedition does have an important place in exploration history. Flores's presentation of the documents, including the previously unpublished Custis natural history catalogue, goes a long way toward filling out the Jeffersonian roster of explorers. But Flores has weakened his book by half proven hints of conspiracy, charges of congressional cover-up, and occasional sniping at other expeditions. The Freeman-Custis story does not require hype. Readers will be pleased to have the documents but may reject Flores's telling of what they mean.

Ritual Pageantry In The American West A Wyoming Case Study, Audrey C. Shalinsky

Great Plains Quarterly

Festivals that celebrate the founding of the town or a similar historical event of local or regional significance are common throughout the United States. In this paper I analyze the annual reenactment in Thermopolis, Wyoming, of the Shoshoni tribe's cession to the whites of control over several thermal springs, an event that led to the founding of the town. I show that the reenactment is an idealized interpretation of various historical events recorded and portrayed in poetic form by a group of townspeople with the limited participation of a few Shoshoni families from Wind River Reservation. I argue that the …

A Review Of The Indian Frontier Of The American West By Robert M. Utley, Thomas Wm. Dunlay

Great Plains Quarterly

In the past twenty years or so the Western American Indians and their conflicts with the white man have become the object of serious historical inquiry. The policies pursued by the United States government have received searching scrutiny, and the study of white men's attitudes toward Indians has become almost a field in itself. The literate public has become aware as never before of the consequences for the Indians of white frontier expansion. What has been needed for some time is a synthesis of the wide range of work being done in the field. Robert Utley is, of course, a …

Cultural And Economic Resilience Among The Kickapoo Indians Of The Southwest, Joseph B. Herring

Great Plains Quarterly

When white explorers encountered them in their Wisconsin homeland, the Kickapoo Indians lived in separate and widely scattered bands. I Although individuals referred to themselves as Kickapoos and identified with the major tribal group, over time the dispersed bands adopted additional cultural traits suitable to different regions and conditions. Environmental factors, proximity to white settlers, missionary pressure, and interaction with other tribes all produced a drift toward cultural pluralism.

Although noted for their conservatism, the Kickapoos were willing to adopt material culture traits that were to their advantage. This trend intensified after a portion of the tribe settled in Kansas …

Review Of The Papers Of Chief John Ross Edited By Gary E. Moulton, W. David Baird

Great Plains Quarterly

John Ross was the foremost leader of the Cherokee people during the nineteenth century if not the whole of tribal history. Born in 1790 of mixed-blood parentage and educated largely by private tutors, he served as chief from 1828 until his death in 1866. Because most of those last century events-removal, factionalism, civil war-that dramatically 3haped the destiny of the Cherokees, as well as other Indian peoples, occurred during Ross's tenure as chief, to understand him and his role in those events is to have a better insight into a large slice of American history. The Papers of Chief John …

Review Of Daughters Of Joy, Sisters Of Misery: Prostitutes In The American West, 1865-90 By Anne M. Butler, Melody Graulich

Great Plains Quarterly

Anne M. Butler's Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery is a broad history of prostitution throughout the American West, based on extensive primary research and illustrated with some wonderful photographs. Like many women's historians, Butler begins with two assumptions: that she will rescue a particular group of women from "historical obscurity" and that she will test and ultimately undermine the stereotypical and often one-dimensional portrayal of their lives. Her major thesis, however, gives her book added scope: while her discussion of the lives of prostitutes reveals that they were often powerless and victimized, she demonstrates convincingly that as a group …

Review Of The Canadian Prairies: A History By Gerald Friesen, R. T. Harrison

Great Plains Quarterly

In The Canadian Prairies, Gerald Friesen has taken on a monumental task. Over the past generation prairie historiography has grown too rapidly to lend itself to synoptic treatments. It would therefore be unreasonable to expect specialists to be entirely satisfied with Friesen's treatment of their aspects of prairie history. I know I would like to edit his remarks on prairie literature, yet my informal inquiries suggest that this book is highly respected both by professional historians and by prairie pioneers, who find that Friesen's narration rings true to their actual experiences. One of Friesen's greatest achievements is in making …

Review Of Maps Of Texas And The Southwest, 1513-1900 By James C. Martin And Robert Sidney Martin, Robert K. Holz

Great Plains Quarterly

Frequently old maps are gathered and reproduced in folio volumes that have little scholarly value but that make handsome coffee table displays. In Maps of Texas and the Southwest, 1513-1900, James and Robert Martin have produced an excellent book on the history of cartography that will be of benefit to current and future collectors and students but that is much more than another coffee table volume. The book goes beyond a simple reproduction of old maps on Texas and the Southwest. The authors have done an admirable job of researching the historical record, not only for old maps, but …

Review Of A Tropical Plains Frontier: The Llanos Of Colombia 1531-1831 By Jane M. Rausch., Kristine L. Jones

Great Plains Quarterly

The strength of this monograph is evident in its solid documentation of three hundred years of Spanish and creole settlement in the tropical plains (llanos) frontier of Colombia, which extends east from the Andean cordillera into the greater llanos of Venezuela. Although speaking directly to a general historiographical and theoretical interest in the frontier, particularly in Latin America and specifically in Colombia, Jane Rausch also provides important background detail about rural history as it relates to political and economic development, especially for Latin America.' While limited to discussion of the Colombian llanos, Rausch's synthesis of parochial detail permits tantalizing comparative …

Review Of Plains Country Towns By John C. Hudson, Lawrence H. Larsen

Great Plains Quarterly

John C. Hudson's new book, Plains Country Towns, deals with the dynamics of town building in a 20,000 square-mile area of north central North Dakota. Between 1880 and 1920 railroad colonization agents and independent speculators platted over 500 town sites. Three railroads, the Soo Line, the Northern Pacific, and the Great Northern, planned towns at roughly ten-mile intervals along their main and branch lines. Sometimes, where tracks intersected, they built neighboring promotions. No one expected all the projects to succeed. They were a device used by the railroads to effectively dominate marketing activities. Hudson, a Northwestern University professor of …

Review Of Lewis And Clark Among The Indians By James P. Ronda, G. Malcom Lewis

Great Plains Quarterly

In his instructions of June 1803 to Meriwether Lewis concerning the conduct of what was to become known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Thomas Jefferson made it quite clear that one of the Expedition's purposes was to pave the way for the development of American commerce with the Indians of the northern Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Pacific Northwest. That was soon to occur but the President could not have anticipated the longer-term economic spin off for the nation's publishing industry. Since the appearance in 1807 of the first printed account of the Expedition more than one hundred books have …

Review Of A Field Guide To American Windmills By T. Lindsay Baker, Homer E. Socolofsky

Great Plains Quarterly

This guide, useful for identifying windmills but somewhat cumbersome for carrying in the field because it weighs more than four pounds, is the most complete general history of the American turbine-wheel windmill. Attractively published, A Field Guide to American Windmills will find a positive response from users of all kinds-those who want to know much about all kinds of windmills or those who want a small amount of specific information.

Review Of Kit Carson: A Pattern For Heroes By Thelma S. Guild And Harvey L. Carter, Stephen Tatum

Great Plains Quarterly

Kit Carson fulfills its authors' hope of providing a readable and reliable biography of its subject. It has helpful maps and illustrations; for the most part it reads well, although the Fremont expedition narrative was the only series of chapters conveying any excitement or enthusiasm. It should appeal to Carson buffs and to history buffs interested in the American Southwest. If it had been more venturesome in speculating at key points on the man's motivations and intentions, and if it had offered intelligent insights on the sociocultural milieu which accorded this unlikely man fame, the biography perhaps would have even …

Review Of Gennan-Russian Folk Architecture In Southeastern South Dakota By Michael Koop And Stephen Ludwig, Roger L. Welsch

Great Plains Quarterly

This is a modest but invaluable introduction for a larger research problem that should be attacked soon, before the artifacts are gone. The authors carefully describe architectural artifacts, providing historic and geographic contexts. There are drawings and photos that provide full detail of the items. Everyone who is interested in ethnic folklore, material culture, or German-Russians will want to have this book.

The Dust Bowl An Introduction, John Braeman

Great Plains Quarterly

In March 1985 the Center for Great Plains Studies of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln held its ninth annual symposium "Social Adaptation to Semiarid Environments." The relevance of that topic was evident alike to specialists and to the reader of daily newspaper stories about drought and accompanying starvation in Africa, recurring crop failures in Russia, China's struggle to feed its teeming population, out-of-control grassland fires in Australia, and depletion of ground water supplies and continued soil erosion in the North American Great Plains. Specialists in a broad range of disciplines explored the ways in which different societies have adjusted in the …

Who Was "Forest Man?" Sources Of Migration To The Plains, John C. Hudson

Great Plains Quarterly

One of the points of high drama in Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains is his description of forest man's entry into the grasslands: Let us visualize the American approach to the Great Plains by imagining ourselves standing on the dividing line between the timber and plain ... As we gaze northward we see on the right side the forested and well-watered country and on the left side the arid, treeless plain. On the right we see a nation of people coming slowly but persistently through the forests, felling trees, building cabins, making rail fences, ... advancing shoulder to shoulder, …

Dust Bowl Historiography, Harry C. Mcdean

Great Plains Quarterly

In the late 1930s, Undersecretary of Agriculture Milburn Lincoln Wilson organized "T ravelling Great Plains Schools," culminating three decades of research and reform work in the Great Plains. The schools brought hundreds of rural social scientists together with scores of federal and state policymakers. The schools were broken into two sections, one dedicated to the southern Plains and the other to the northern. Those who attended spent several weeks making their way through the Plains, with care taken to differentiate problems particular to each of the two regions. In the southern Plains, the school spent several days examining the problems …

The African Experience Drought And Famine In The Dry Zone, Randall Baker

Great Plains Quarterly

This paper concerns the changing climate in the semiarid regions of Africa and the technological response to it. Often the central issue in physical and social change in Africa seems to be interpreting a sketchy but rapidly evolving base of "evidence" and trying to decide the process that the evidence would suggest is at work. This is a far from easy task, requiring inspired guesswork as much as proof, but clearly it is absolutely central to formulating an appropriate policy response.

Drought Mitigation In Australia Reducing The Losses But Not Removing The Hazard, R. L. Heathcote

Great Plains Quarterly

In Australia technology has reduced but not eliminated the impact of drought and seems set to do the same for the foreseeable CO2-induced climate change. To document this claim, I wish here to consider first a brief history of drought in Australia-pointing up some parallels and contrasts with the North American experience; second, to outline the various strategies (technological and nontechnological) that have been adopted to try to mitigate drought; third, to review the current thinking on the effect of increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 on the Australian climate and their releva9ce to agricultural and pastoral activities through possible modification …

International Drought Mitigation An Introduction, Donald A. Wilhite

Great Plains Quarterly

This special issue of Great Plains Quarterly includes the papers from the international sessions of the symposium, beginning with the keynote address by J. M. Powell, "Abideth Forever?" Global Use of Semiarid Lands in the Interwar Years." Powell's thesis is that the new nationalisms, old imperial networks, and burgeoning successes and ambitions of scientists combined between the two world wars to create new systems of land use in semiarid regions. In his introduction, Powell poses an interesting question: Were decisions about the management of these fragile ecosystems developed within the region as a result of experience, or outside the region …