Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Song Texts And Their Performers: The Centerpiece Of Contemporary Lakota Identity Formulation, R. D. Theisz

Great Plains Quarterly

During the 1960s and 1970s both American Indians and non-Indians showed intense interest in and awareness of the Indian world, and many traditional activities became more popular. This boom atmosphere has waned in the late 1980s, and Indian youths and young adults have therefore changed the focus of their search for identity formulation. In this article, I have been concerned with an aspect of Lakota traditionalism that is being granted more and more significance in the Lakota scheme of things-traditional song and dance. I have based the article on my readings in ethnomusicological literature, my informal observations over many years …

Notes & News (Great Plains Quarterly 7:2 [Spring 1987])

Great Plains Quarterly

IN MEMORIAM Margaret Laurence

Twelfth annual conference, to be held 16-18 March 1988, will be "The Arts on the Plains: The Role of Institutions."

Western Literature Association will hold its annual meeting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln 15-17 October 1987

Baylor University will hold a national symposium entitled "Regionalism: Concepts and Applications" 1-3 October 1987.

Many back issues of Great Plains Quarterly are still available

ERRATA -- Prairie Politics and Society: Regionalism in Decline, by Roger Gibbins, was attributed to the wrong publisher in a review

Early Fur Trade On The Northern Plains: Canadian Traders Among The Mandan And Hidatsa Indians, 1738-1818., James A. Hanson

Great Plains Quarterly

The permanent villages of farming Indians on the Upper Missouri were a central focus for trade in prehistoric times. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, both French and Spanish traders had reach ed the area, and by the early nineteenth century, the Mandan- Hidatsa villages had come to be a Parisian entrepot for the buffalo hunting tribes, the St. Louis and Canadian traders, and the artists and explorers of young America. While the drive up the Missouri from St. Louis is well documented, Wood and Thiessen have unveiled for us an exciting story of the important and early Canadian …

Climate Of The Great Plains Region Of The United States, Norman J. Rosenberg

Great Plains Quarterly

The climate of the Great Plains is extreme and variable. A wide range of weather conditions can occur within the period of a day, from one day to the next, from season to season, and from year to year. There are two key reasons for this situation: (1) the greatest portion of the Plains is remote from any major body of water and (2) air masses of differing characteristics alternate frequently in their dominance of the region.

Nature In Don Segundo Sombra And The Virginian, John Donahue

Great Plains Quarterly

Environment and culture shape human beings, both as individuals and as societies. In all the vast plains of the Americas where a cattle industry developed, a human type evolved a distinct way of life: the gaucho in Argentina, the charro in Mexico, the llanero in Venezuela, the guaso in Chile, and the cowboy in the United States and Canada. ¹ Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, an Argentine intellectual who was an avid reader of James Fenimore Cooper, was perhaps the first to state clearly in regard to the Americas that wherever a similar combination of geographical features occurs, parallel customs and occupations …

Comparative Frontier Scoial Life: Western Saloons And Argentine Pulperias, Richard W. Slatta

Great Plains Quarterly

In sparsely populated cattle frontier regions of the nineteenth century, only a limited number of social institutions functioned. The ranch, as a central socioeconomic complex, took on added importance. Ranch owners often took upon themselves political and legal powers exercised by civic officials in more settled areas. In the cattle regions of the American West and the pampas of Argentina, taverns were important local institutions. A comparison of social activities in the western saloon and the Argentine pulperi'a-a combination country store and tavern-reveals strong similarities. As frontier institutions, they served analogous multiple functions, and their cowboy and gaucho patrons behaved …

West Of Wichita: Settling The High Plains Of Kansas, 1865-1890., David M. Emmons

Great Plains Quarterly

Craig Miner's new book is a social history of the settlement of a specific Western region. In methodology and manner of presentation it resembles other "new" social histories. It is interdisciplinary and based on the social scientists' modeling techniques. Miner cites European historians and, what is more remarkable, one can imagine them citing him. He uses unconventional primary materialsmanuscript censuses, tax records, and the reminiscences of the "ordinary" people whose story he tells; he concentrates on the material lives of those people, "the fellows at the bottom," Bertolt Brecht called them, the ones, according to T. E. Lawrence who "did …

Tom Benton And His Drawings: A Biographical Essa)' And A Collection Of His Sketches, Studies, And Mural Cartoons, Richard W. Etulain

Great Plains Quarterly

This volume, which reproduces about two hundred of Thomas Hart Benton's more than two thousand works, is a valuable scholarly study as well as a handsomely produced book about one of the modern West's most significant artists. As such, it avoids the major limitation of many recent works on western art in which academic excellence is sacrificed to the larger-and less notable-aim of producing a visually appealing book with sales potential.

The Assault On Assimilation: John Collier And The Origins Of Indian Policy Reform, Henry E. Fritz

Great Plains Quarterly

About one quarter of this book is devoted to John Collier's interest in various kinds of social experiments before he discovered the American Indian. One learns a great deal about Collier's family background and his association with Mabel Dodge, Stella Atwood, Tony Luhan, Dr. John R. Haynes, and D. H. Lawrence. No additional research will be needed in reference to these aspects of Collier's reform impulse and orientation.

Index To Vol 7

Great Plains Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Life And Times Of James Willard Schultz (Apikuni)., Starr Jenkins

Great Plains Quarterly

Warren Hanna h ere gives us a splendid, complete biography of James Willard Schultz (1 859-1947), a not-so-well -known but excellent writer on the America n West. In 1877, at seventeen, Schultz arrived in Montana Territory and "began to live intimately the life of an Indian [among the Blackfeet] almost from the day he arrived in the West. He ate their food, slept in their lodges , and began to learn the difficult Blackfoot language; he eventually was able not only to speak it well but to think as the Indians did. He began to see the world through the …

The Plains Indians Of The Twentieth Century., Thomas F. Schilz

Great Plains Quarterly

Peter Iverson's The Plains Indians of the Twentieth Century is an attempt to document some of contemporary Plains Indian life. Iverson's collaborators include a number of well-known writers on Indian history and social issues, but their contributions are drawn from previously published works rather than being written for this anthology.

Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey., Robert W. Cherny

Great Plains Quarterly

Carlos Schwantes tells us in Coxey's Army that the 1894 "petition in boots" aroused greater fears of social disorder than any event since the disputed election of 1876, although he also makes clear that such fears were largely groundless. The march on Washington to demand federal jobs for the unemployed was the brain child of Jacob Coxey, a prosperous Ohio quarry-owner, and Carl Browne, an itinerant panorama-painter who joined marches of the unemployed in Chicago in 1893. Coxey hoped not only to eliminate unemployment and create good roads but also to inflate the currency bv paying workers in legal tender …

Tribal Dispossession And The Ottawa Indian University Fraud., Thomas Burnell Colbert

Great Plains Quarterly

The story is complex with many actors-- white missionaries, church officials, land speculators, town boosters, government officials, and Ottawa Indian leaders from opposing factions. Good intentions are mixed with deceit. And in the final chapter, there is neither a happy nor a tragic ending, only a belated settlement. William E. Unrah and H. Craig Miner, two highly capable historians at Wichita State University, have produced this case study of the chicanery associated with the creation of Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas. They expose how the desire of Baptist missionaries to create a college for Ottawa Indians became entangled with land …

State And Local Regulations For Reducing Agricultural Erosion And Ecological Planning For Farmland Preservation, Charles Deknatel

Great Plains Quarterly

The authority to plan and regulate land use in the U.S. belongs to the states and is largely delegated to local governments. Agricultural policy is defined at the national level. These reports introduce planners to two major conservation problems in agriculture-soil erosion and conversion of farmland to other uses. Both documents offer guidance, methods and strategies aimed primarily at local and state action. Neither report offers conclusive analysis nor addresses the national and international market influences on agriculture policy.

Review Of N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural And Literary Background By Matthias Schubnell, Kenneth C. Mason

Great Plains Quarterly

Despite the fact that Momaday's individual books have received a good deal of attention in the form of critical essays, this is the first book-length treatment of his work. It is a happy circumstance, then, for Momaday and for scholars of Native American literature, that Schubnell has written such a broad, penetrating, and extensively researched study. This book will doubtless be the standard Momaday critical text for some time to come.

On The Nature Of The Horse Of The American West In Nineteenth Century Art, Martin E. Petersen

Great Plains Quarterly

In nineteenth century America the horse was identified with the frontier and served as an image of independence and unrestrained freedom. Western travelers published in their diaries and journals accounts of sighting mustangs, the wild horses of the prairies. Washington Irving's vivid descriptions in his Tour on the Prairirs (1835) were among the earliest. In painting, literature's sister art, however, images of the western horse do not correspond with the written descriptions of the livestock that actually inhabited the area. The artists, rather, painted the ideal Arahian horse, a recognizable type developed throughout the century. The Arahian, considered the oldest …

Cities Of The Prairie Revisited: The Closing Of The Metropolitan Frontier, John C. Schneider

Great Plains Quarterly

In a series of highly-regarded publications during the early 1970s, Daniel Elazar selected ten medium-sized communities he believed were representative of urban America, placed them in a broad historical context, and examined their ability to respond politically to the changes and problems confronting them in the years between World War II and the Kennedy administration. Elazar now returns to those same communities (predominantly in Illinois) and picks up the story where he left off, carrying it down through the Great Society, Vietnam, and Nixon's New Federalism.

Navitism Or Not? Perceptions Of British Investments In Kansas, 1882-1901, Larry A. Mcfarlane

Great Plains Quarterly

A recurring topic in the historiography of Populism has been the extent to which the Populists and other agrarian radicals were nativist or anti..Semitic in the tenor of some of their reforms. In this article I trace the progress of legislation intended to restrict or eliminate absentee ownership of Kansas lands by aliens, particularly British landlords, from the first demand for such restriction in 1882 through the enactment of restrictive legislation in 1891 to its repeal in 1901. I parallel this study by following the currents of anti..alien rhetoric of the agrarian radicals who advocated the restrictions. While it is …

Review Of Prohibition In Kansas: A History, Patrick G. O'Brien

Great Plains Quarterly

Owner of the prohibition longevity record, Kansas has a history that in large part focuses on the suppression of intoxicating beverages. Prohibition divided Kansans longer and deeper than any other issue, and none is better to explain the social texture and personality of the state. Eschewing that opportunity, historians have tended to minimize its importance and treat it in a cursory fashion. This book is the first scholarly and comprehensive analysis of prohibition from inception to demise in the purportedly driest state iIi America. The examination of Kansas in a broad context also adds a dimension to prohibition as a …

Nowhere Left To Go: Montana's Crees, Metis, And Chippewas And The Creation Of Rocky Boy's Resevation, Larry Burt

Great Plains Quarterly

In the last third of the nineteenth century, the federal governments of Canada and the United States asserted their jurisdiction over the Great Plains through a series of treaties that established reservations for the various Indian tribes of the area. By the turn of the century, three small native groups found themselves homeless relics of a distant past long after other peoples had moved to their reservations. Several bands of Cree Indians and a number of mixed-bloods, who called themselves Metis, had used lands on both sides of the line that had become the border between the state of Montana …

Plains Indian Agrariaism And Class Conflict, Russel Lawrence Barsh

Great Plains Quarterly

Relatively little has been done to trace the political structures of American Indians through the years 1890 to 1940, when reservation economics were undergoing their most dramatic changes. That failure has left the false impression of a fifty-vear institutional vacuum. In fact, the middle years were times of complex reJisrrihutions of power ;md the emergence of indigellous socioeconomic classes. It was also perhaps the earliest period in which Plains Indians enjoyed anything like an Americanstyle, decentralized elective democracy. Federal programs shifted the control of the Indians' food supply. From being skilled hunter- organizers they became recipients of gc)\"ernnwnt patronage, heelme …

Leadership Selection In Canadian Indian Communities, Reforming The Present And Incorporating The Past, J Anthony Long, Menno Boldt

Great Plains Quarterly

With improving prospects of achieving a greater measure of political autonomy for their governments, native Indian leaders in Canada are beginning to look seriously at reforming internal tribal/band political structures. Their objectives arc to establish band governments that meet the present social and economic needs of Indian peoples as well as reflect traditional political values. A "hand" is a legal entity specified in the Indian Act, a federal statute that has governed Indians in Canada since shortly after Confederation. In most instances the band corresponds to traditional tribal social and political organization, and these concepts are now often used interchangeably. …

The Indian Reorganization Act And The Loss Of Tribal Sovereignty: Constitutions On The Rosebud And Pine Ridge Reservations, Richmond L. Clow

Great Plains Quarterly

The rhetoric of the Indian New Deal has directed scholars to study tribal political activities only after the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Graham D. Taylor expressed the prevailing opinion when he claimed that "the tribal governments established under the Indian Reorganization Act constitute a totally new and unfamiliar level of organization for many Indian groups.'" Although the flurry of new tribal constitutions adopted after 1934 overshadowed previous constitutional activities, Taylor and others overstate the case. Indian tribes had always had the right to determine their own form of government, and many tribes, beginning with the Cherokee in 1827, had …

Plains Indian Sculpture: A Traditional Art From America's Heartland., George P. Horse Capture

Great Plains Quarterly

Many years ago as the beauty and importance of Plains Indian art and history became more essential to my life, I felt the impact of Dr. Ewers long before finally meeting him and his wonderful wife, Marge, in Cody at a Plains Indian seminar fish-fry. We soon made friends and this relationship endures to this day. Knowing of this upcoming work and the extensive research Dr. Ewers devoted to the relatively little-known topic of Plains Indian miniature sculpture, I am elated with this latest publication by a master of the field.

After The Buffalo Were Gone: The Louis Warren Hill, Sr., Collection Of Indian Art., Richard W. Etulain

Great Plains Quarterly

This catalogue of the Louis W. Hill Collection of Indian art and crafts, evenly divided between the Museum of the Plains Indians in Browning, Montana, and the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, makes available to specialists and general readers a visual portrait of a notable collection. While nearly 170 of the book's 256 pages consist of brief descriptions alongside black-and-white illustrations of items contained in the Hill collection, the volume also includes an account of Louis W. Hill, Glacier Park, and the gathering of the Hill collection by Ann T. Walton; a very brief essay by noted ethnologist …

The Indians Of Texas: An Annotatcd Research Bibliography., Joseph B. Herring

Great Plains Quarterly

Michael Tate has provided scholars and students alike with a valuable and comprehensive bibliography of the various Indian tribes that once lived within the boundaries of the present state of Texas. Included are 3,796 citations on the native Coahuiltecan, Karankawa, Tonkaw'a, Jumano, \X/ichita, Caddo, Atakapa, Comanche, and Kiowa peoples a:; well as the emigrant Cherokees, AlabamaCoushattas, Seminoles, and Kickapoos who moved to Texas during the first half of the nineteenth century. The work is divided into two books. The first is a tribal arrangement focusing on Indian cultures, and the second is a chronological arrangement of Indian-white rclations from the …

Plains Indian Cultures: An Introduction, Frances W. Kaye

Great Plains Quarterly

In March 1986 more than 200 scholars and other participants came to a symposium entitled "Plains Indian Cultures: Past and Present Meanings." The six articles that follow represent a cross section of the conference. Two separate volumes of conference papers, on international perspectives and on policy issues, are to be published later. We thank Vernon Snow and the Snow Foundation for supporting all of these publications.

The Expeditions Of John Charles Fremont, John L. Allen

Great Plains Quarterly

With the publication of this third volume in the Expeditions of John Charles Fremont series, a massive compilation and editing task begun in 1965 has come to an end. The first volume and accompanying map portfolio, published in 1970, dealt with Fremont's travels between 1838 and 1844, focusing on the first and second expeditions into the American West which secured his fame as an explorer. The second, published in 1973, was devoted to Fremont's third expedition, his participation in the Bear Flag Revolt and subsequent court martial. Finally, the present work covers Fremont's travels between 1848 and 1854, encompassing the …

Solomon D. Butcher: Photographing The American Dream., Joanne Jacobson

Great Plains Quarterly

John E. Carter has collected Solomon D. Butcher's photographs of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century rural and small town Nebraska life in the most sharply detailed reproductions and the most generous format yet available. Cataloging the physical and social environment of farm families and ranchers, objects of work and leisure, the construction of prairie sod houses, the arrival of technology and urbane civilization on the frontier, Butcher's work provides an irreplaceable record of the establishment of white culture on the Plains.