Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Shaping Nebraska An Analysis Of Railroad And Land Sales, 1870-1880, Kurt E. Kinbacher, William G. Thomas Iii

Great Plains Quarterly

On December 23, 1878, Ohio resident D. F. Vanniss wrote to George P. Cather, the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad's land agent in Red Cloud, Nebraska. He asked Cather to buy for him "the best 160 acres of R. R. Land in your county," and just to be clear he emphasized, "I want it before somebody else gets it." Cather received many such breathless letters, urgent, pleading, and intense inquiries about the lands the railroad had for sale. Nearly all wanted to know the position of the allimportant railroad. Almost all inquired about the availability of the all-important resource: water. …

Literature Review Of Mule Deer And White-Tailed Deer Movements In Western And Midwestern Landscapes, Scott E. Hygnstrom, Scott R. Groepper, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Chuck J. Frost, Justin R. Boner, Travis C. Kinsell, Gregory M. Clements

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

The relationships among seasonal change, population dynamics, social pressures, landscape dynamics, anthropologic disturbances, and behavioral ecology are complex. Therefore, migration and seasonal movements are poorly understood and dispersal continues to be one of the least understood aspects of animal ecology in North America. We reviewed scientific literature on movements of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and white-tailed deer (O. virginianus) in western and midwestern landscapes to identify gaps in our knowledge and direct future research. We used electronic databases, library catalogs, Internet search engines, and peer-reviewed journals to conduct key word searches for pertinent articles. We found …

Relief For Wanderers: The Transient Service In Kansas, 1933-35, Peter Fearon

Great Plains Quarterly

Located at the crossroads of America, Kansas had long experience of interstate migrants. For many decades armies of workers had entered the state to pursue the harvest of a number of crops, or to pick up whatever work was available on their way west in pursuit of a more rewarding life. The U.S. population was highly mobile and migration played an essential role in a vigorously expanding economy. Ailing transients, especially tubercular cases, had as their destination the pure, dry air of the Southwest. To these we can add indeterminate numbers of seasonal workers, ex-veterans, homeless boys, peddlers, beggars, and …

Migration Out Of 1930s Rural Eastern Oklahoma: Insights For Climate Change Research, Robert Mcleman

Great Plains Quarterly

I undertook an investigation of how rural populations responded to a period of adverse climatic conditions in rural eastern Oklahoma during the 1930s, with particular interest in those households that adapted by migrating to rural California. This is not the first time that 19305 Oklahoma has been the subject of research into how people and communities adapt to difficult environmental conditions. In the wake of a 1985 conference entitled "Social Adaptation to Semi-Arid Environments" at the Center for Great Plains Studies in Lincoln, Great Plains Quarterly presented a series of papers by well-known scholars exploring human-environment interactions that gave rise …

A Longitudinal Approach To Great Plains Migration, John C. Hudson

Great Plains Quarterly

Students of population and regional studies are familiar with the demographic "accounting" equation,

Population _t+x = Population _t + Births _x

-Deaths _x + Immigration _x

- Emigration _x

In other words, the size of the population at time t + x is equal to the population at time t plus the births, minus the deaths, plus the immigrants, minus the emigrants, during the interval of time x. This simple formula can be used to derive a variety of rates and statistics describing population change. The equation's main application is to describe short-term change in a population in terms …

Drawn By The Bison Late Prehistoric Native Migration Into The Central Plains, Lauren W. Ritterbush

Great Plains Quarterly

Popular images of the Great Plains frequently portray horse-mounted Indians engaged in dramatic bison hunts. The importance of these hunts is emphasized by the oft-mentioned dependence of the Plains Indians on bison. This animal served as a source of not only food but also materials for shelter, clothing, containers, and many other necessities of life. Pursuit of the vast bison herds (combined with the needs of the Indians' horses for pasturage) affected human patterns of subsistence, mobility, and settlement. The Lakota and Cheyenne, for instance, are described as relying heavily on bison meat for food and living a nomadic lifestyle …

Habitat Associations Of Migrating And Overwintering Grassland Birds In Southern Texas, Lawrence D. Igl, Bart M. Ballard

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

We report on the habitat associations of 21 species of grassland birds over- wintering in or migrating through southern Texas, during 1991-1992 and 1992-1993. Ninety percent of our grassland bird observations were made during winter and spring, and only 10% occurred during fall. Grassland species made up a high proportion of the total bird densities in grassland and shrub-grassland habitats, but much lower proportions in the habitats with more woody vegetation. Fewer grassland species were observed in grassland and woodland than in brushland, parkland, and shrub-grassland habitats. Grassland birds generally were found in higher densities in habitats that had woody …

Size Differences In Migrant Sandpiper Flocks: Ghosts In Ephemeral Guilds, Jan L. Eldridge, Douglas H. Johnson

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Scolopacid sandpipers were studied from 1980 until 1984 during spring migration in North Dakota. Common species foraging together in mixed-species flocks differed in bill length most often by 20 to 30 percent (ratios from 1.2:1 to 1.3:1). Observed flocks were compared to computer generated flocks drawn from three source pools of Arctic-nesting sandpipers. The source pools included 51 migrant species from a global pool, 33 migrant species from a Western Hemisphere pool, and 13 species that migrated though North Dakota. The observed flocks formed randomly from the available species that used the North Dakota migration corridor but the North Dakota …