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"Introduction" To The Great Plains: Environment And Culture, Frederick C. Luebke

Department of History: Faculty Publications

In the pages that follow I have summarized the views of certain selected scholars whose emphases seem to illustrate changing and contrasting interpretations of the interaction of environment and culture on the Great Plains. I have grouped their writings into two inclusive categories. First come those whose conceptual schemes suggest the primacy of environmental variables. I refer to these scholars, perhaps simplistically, as environmentalists, even though this term has acquired a different meaning in recent years. In the second group are several scholars, selected more arbitrarily than the first, whose writings seem to accord more importance to cultural factors. For …