Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Notes And News- Summer 1998

Great Plains Quarterly

Notes and News

Big Bend Studies Conference

Research Fellowship In Southwest Studies

Half A Century Of Saskatchewan History

Rural Studies Meeting In Texas

Review Of Beyond Bounds: Cross-Cultural Essays On Anglo, American Indian, & Chicano Literature By Robert Franklin Gish, Ricardo L. Garcia

Great Plains Quarterly

Good writing transcends boundaries, says Robert Franklin Gish in this cross-cultural inquiry into Anglo, American Indian, and Chicano literature. Beyond Bounds grew out of Gish's willingness to risk "the disdain of advocating ... 'Buffalo Chip Lit'" to test the notion that "no one ethnicity, no one group ... offers the ultimate 'truth' of tourism, seen most metaphorically as the 'tourism' of mortality."

Part One, "Anglo Visitors," examines the early twentieth-century writings of Charles Lummis, Erna Ferguson, Harvey Ferguson, and Witter Bynner, visitors to New Mexico who were unabashed supporters of Anglo conquest. Yet they recognized they were newcomers to an …

Review Of The Culture Of Wilderness: Agriculture As Colonization In The American West By Frieda Knobloch, Emily Greenwald

Great Plains Quarterly

In this intriguing synthesis, Frieda Knobloch brings a new set of ideas to existing scholarship on agriculture and the environmental history of the American West. She traces the process of "nature becoming culture," the ways in which naturally existing resources (land, animals, plants, and trees) were transformed into agriculturally-managed commodities, thereby serving the twin imperatives of colonization and agriculture. Knobloch argues that colonization and agriculture not only sprang from the same roots in the English language, but have also operated hand-in-hand to dispossess indigenous plants, animals, and peoples. In Knobloch's formulation, neither can exist apart from the other-essentially, agriculture is …

Review Of Native American Verbal Art: Texts And Contexts By William M. Clements, Linda Lizut Herstern

Great Plains Quarterly

Native American Verbal Art should be required reading for all teachers of American literature committed to teaching translations from the Native American oral tradition. William Clements's study stands as a companion to The Sixth Grandfather (1984), Raymond DeMallie's account of the textual creation of Black Elk Speaks. Using an historical approach, Clements reveals the problems of translating traditional oratory, including the translator's frequent ignorance of the Native language being translated. (While some translators have worked with a bilingual intermediary, many have simply re-rendered previous translations without reference to the Native language text.)

Clements examines in some depth the practices …

Review Of From Our Eyes: Learning From Indigenous Peoples Edited By Sylvia O'Meara And Douglas A. West, Pete Hudson

Great Plains Quarterly

This collection of writings by aboriginal authors, all of whom are academics from a wide range of disciplines, is rescued from what could have been a succession of fragments, few of them of relevance to anyone reader, by each author's scholarly clarity. Moreover, the multiand interdisciplinary quality of the book, manifested within and between each contribution, reinforces a unifying theme: the holistic world view shared by the authors, one that continually seeks to break through boundaries, including those of particular disciplines.

The book's interest and value, however, are not contained in anyone theme. There are themes within themes here, difficult …

Review Of The Caddos, The Wichitas, And The United States, 1846-1901 By F. Todd Smith, Elizabeth A.H. John

Great Plains Quarterly

An introductory assertion that neither the Caddo nor the Wichita had to endure a particularly traumatic relocation experience will startle any reader who has an inkling of the history of those tribes. Ultimately, it must perplex anyone who perseveres through the ensuing chronicle of repeated dispossession and decimation under the aegis of the governments of Texas and the United States. The first chapter presents further dubious analysis, sometimes irrelevant to the sources cited, in a quixotic attempt to trace both tribes from the '1540s to 1846 in sixteen pages.

Happily, the author hits his stride in chapter two, thenceforth relying …

Review Of Writing The Range: Race, Class, And Culture In The Women's West Edited With Introduction By Elizabeth Jameson And Susan Armitage, Angel Kwolek-Folland

Great Plains Quarterly

This collection of twenty-nine essays, some previously published, aspires to assemble some of the most important new work on women in the multicultural West and to challenge a monocultural national narrative. The focus on the West assumes that region is a meaningful analytical category. In addition, the editors argue that the dynamic of waves of migration to contested territory could stand as a process common to the nation's entire history. Because of the nature of an essay collection, the latter aspiration is difficult to sustain as a coherent argument. Nonetheless, the collection succeeds as a fairly comprehensive introduction to the …

Review Of "And Prairie Dogs Weren't Kosher": Jewish Women In The Upper Midwest Since 1855 By Linda Mack Schloff, H. Elaine Lindgren

Great Plains Quarterly

Spanning the experiences of early immigrants to those of contemporary women, Linda Mack Schloff's concise yet comprehensive history of the contributions of Jewish women in the upper Midwest is an important addition to the region's ethnic literature. The author successfully integrates disparate information from several time periods, enabling the reader to follow a progression of adaptations and social changes. The resulting mosaic displays general trends but also depicts the ways in which individual women worked out distinct solutions to their circumstances. The study relies heavily on first-person accounts or "voices" of both women and men. Excellent photographs enhance and reinforce …

Review Of The True Spirit And Original Intent Of Treaty 7 By Treaty 7 Elders And Tribal Council With Walter Hildebrandt, Sarah Carter, And Dorothy First Rider, David Reed Miller

Great Plains Quarterly

The eleven numbered treaties between representatives of the Crown on behalf of the Dominion of Canada and First Nations resident within specific regions of central and western Canada were negotiated from 1850 to 1929. Treaty 7, negotiated 19 to 22 September 1877 at Blackfoot Crossing, included the Bloods, Peigans, and Siksika, three of the divisions of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Stoney (all southern Stoney except the Bighorn Band), and the Tsuu T'ina (Sarcee) and encompassed the region of southern Alberta.

This volume represents a synthesis of information gathered by the Treaty 7 Project, a special collaborative research endeavor of the …

Review Of Standing In The Light: A Lakota Way Of Seeing By Severt Young Bear And R. D. Theisz, Kelly J. Morgan

Great Plains Quarterly

Dance, song, and spiritual renewal are at the heart of traditional Lakota life in contemporary America. Severt Young Bear's life experiences, as told in this collaborative work resulting from Young Bear and R. D. Theisz's close relationship developed over three decades, are a continuation of Lakota autobiographical and biographical literature. Theisz's fluency in Lakota language, his broad knowledge of traditional and contemporary Lakota life, as well as his adoption by a Lakota family, lend to his credibility in co-authoring the text. His friendship with Young Bear centered on their common interests in music and dance, and each's particular talents led …

Review Of Leaning Into The Wind: Women Write From The Heart Of The West Edited By Edited By Linda Hasselstrom, Gaydell Collier, And Nancy Curtis., Tisha Gilreath-Mullen

Great Plains Quarterly

Linda Hasselstrom (rancher and author of Windbreak, Going Over East, Land Circle, and Caught by One Wing), Gaydell Collier (rancher, director of the Crook County Public Library in Wyoming, and co-author of several books on horse training), and Nancy Curtis (rancher and owner-operator of the highly acclaimed High Plains Press) combined talents to edit Leaning into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West. Contributors-of which there are at least two hundred-to this anthology of western women's writings offer a counter-balance to High Plains stereotypes popularized by those historians and writers who erased women's existence from …

Review Of Constitutionalism And Native Americans, 1903 - 1968. Volume 2 Of Native Americans And The Law: Contemporary And Historical Perspectives On American Indian Rights, Freedoms, And SovereigntyEdited With Introductions By John R. Wunder, Jill Norgren

Great Plains Quarterly

The previously published essays selected by editor John R. Wunder for volume two of this six book series take up the legal, political, and economic issues of Native American sovereignty at the critical moment of the 1903 Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock United States Supreme Court decision (treated in volume one). In his brief introduction to volume two, Wunder describes the period from 1903 to 1968 as one in which the tension between federally enforced tribal constitutionalism and "residual sovereign rights" was played out. Excerpts from Charles Wilkinson's American Indians, Time, and the Law (1987) provide an opening framework to explain …

Review Of Empire Builder In The Texas Panhandle: William Henry Bush By Paul H. Carlson, Ben E. Pingenot

Great Plains Quarterly

William Henry Bush was a manufacturer, rancher, businessman, real estate developer, and philanthropist who rose to prominence and wealth during the last half of the nineteenth century. Born in the state of New York in 1849, Bush tried twice after turning thirteen to run away and join the Union Army as a drummer boy. His mother apprenticed him instead to a store owner in Lowville, New York, which marked the start of his career as a general merchant. At age twenty, he moved to Chicago to work for a wholesale clothing business, King Brothers and Company, at a salary of …

Review Of Cather Studies Volume 3. Edited By Susan J. Rosowski, Patrick W. Shaw

Great Plains Quarterly

With some notable exceptions, the fourteen essays in this collection come from critics well-known to the most casual reader of Cather scholarship-John J. Murphy, Merrill Maguire Skaggs, and Marilyn Arnold, for example. Because their views and interdependence are familiar, the reader should be at ease traveling through some of the best traditional criticism of Willa Cather's fiction.

The collection is at its best, however, in essays that deviate from the familiar and traditional. Ann Romines's "Her Mortal Enemy's Daughter: Cather and the Writing of Age" is its finest piece. Immediately following John J. Murphy's "Gilt Diana and Ivory Christ: Love …

Review Of Wallace Stegner: His Life And Work By Jackson J. Benson, Robert Thacker

Great Plains Quarterly

When he died of injuries sustained in an automobile accident in April of 1993, Wallace Stegner left a list of eight writing projects he had yet to do pinned above his desk, awaiting his return. Noting this fact toward the end of this thorough biography, Benson writes that "Stegner's career as a novelist followed a pattern of lifelong growth, reaching its zenith near the end." He was, his biographer says, "simply, by far, the brightest man I've ever known," and ultimately Benson concludes that "Perhaps Wallace Stegner's greatest creation was himself-a good man who always did the best he could. …

Review Of Legacy: New Perspectives On The Battle Of The Little Bighorn Edited By Charles E. Rankin, Gregory J. Urwin

Great Plains Quarterly

For more than twenty years, the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument has generated more controversy than any other unit administered by the National Park Service. Amateur historians belonging to the Little Big Horn Associates-angry because their overpriced, vanity press books were not sold in the park bookstore-had the staff investigated for alleged anti-Custer bias. At the same time, increasingly belligerent Native American activists protested that the site of their ancestors' greatest victory was being run as a shrine to the frontier military.

In 1988, Russell Means and other militants from the American Indian Movement stormed onto the battlefield and desecrated …

Review Of The Indian Bill Of Rights, 1968. Volume 3 Of Native Americans And The Law: Contemporary And Historical Perspectives On American Indian Rights, Freedoms, And Sovereignty Edited With Introductions By John R. Wunder, David E. Wilkins

Great Plains Quarterly

The extra-constitutional status of indigenous nations and their distinct political relationship with the United States government, no less than the equally distinctive nature of the relationship of individual Indians to their tribal governments and other sovereignties they are more problematically related to, the state and federal governments, is a most complicated subject. Individuals venturing into this intellectual and substantive thicket should be applauded for their academic bravery. The third of the six volume series edited by John R. Wunder sets out to explore that thicket.

Wunder claims the volume is "of particular significance," not only because of its subject matter, …

Review Of A New Significance: Re-Envisioning The History Of The American West Edited By Clyde A. Milner Ii, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly

Playing off the title of the famous essay by Frederick Jackson Turner, this volume of essays and commentaries is, for the most part, the outgrowth of a 1992 Utah State University conference planned as an opportunity for young scholars, as well as a few older ones, to offer new perspectives on the future directions of Western history a century after Turner delivered his influential words. For this collection of essays, several of them previously published in the Western Historical Quarterly, Clyde Milner provides the usual cogent introductory remarks and excellent editing skills we have come to expect of him. …

Financing The Palliser Triangle, 1908-1913, Warren M. Elofson, John Feldberg

Great Plains Quarterly

A decade ago, David C. Jones compellingly described the immense ecological and human tragedy that occurred in the southern, semiarid districts of Alberta and Saskatchewan in the late 1910s and early 1920s.¹ Prior to World War I settlers poured into these provinces buoyed by dreams of a better life, but in the decade or so following 1915 many who had taken homesteads in the so-called Palliser Triangle saw their hopes shattered by successive years of drought and crop failure. One of the crucial vehicles in this tragedy was the financial institution. Between 1908 and 1913 investment firms made available …

Trains Through The Plains The Great Plains Landscape Of Victorian Women Travelers, Karen M. Morin

Great Plains Quarterly

The young British novelist Iza Hardy, during her travels to America in 1881-83, anticipated the American West as terra incagnitae, a place completely beyond civilization. Like many other British tourists to America in the late nineteenth century, Hardy traveled extensively throughout the East Coast and South, and took a transcontinental journey to the Pacific Coast by train (Fig. O. Out of her American travels Hardy produced Between Two Oceans: Or, Sketches of American Travel (1884) and a book about Florida. Hardy's coverage of the western portion of her American journey followed the transect the railroad did, with chapters of …

Title And Contents- Summer 1998

Great Plains Quarterly

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

SUMMER 1998 VOL. 18 NO.3

CONTENTS

FRAMING THE TOURIST GAZE: RAILWAY JOURNEYS ACROSS NEBRASKA, 1866-1906 Jean P. Retzinger

FEATURE FOLIO: IMAGES OF GREAT PLAINS TRAIN TRAVEL TRAINS THROUGH THE PLAINS: THE GREAT PLAINS LANDSCAPE OF VICTORIAN WOMEN TRAVELERS Karen Morin

FINANCING THE PALLISER TRIANGLE, 1908-1913 John Feldberg and Warren M. Elofson

BOOK REVIEWS

NEWS AND NOTES

Framing The Tourist Gaze Railway Journeys Across Nebraska, 1866-1906, Jean P. Retzinger

Great Plains Quarterly

As the last of the Conestoga wagons crossed the Nebraska plains along the worn and rutted Oregon Trail, the tracks of the Union Pacific were already being laid. Telegraph wires had crossed the continent by 1861; the railroad would follow within the decade. Touted as the latest technology to transform space and time, the railroad was to "bind all portions of our country in one homogeneous organism of political, military, social, commercial and Christian nationality and power."² Trains from the East transported consumer goods and consumers alike to the western territories, traversing in a single hour what once had …

Review Of Native American Law And Colonialism, Before 1776 To 1903. Volume 1 Of Native Americans And The Law: Contemporary And Historical Perspectives On American Indian Rights, Freedoms, And Sovereignty Edited With Introductions By John R. Wunder, William T. Hagan

Great Plains Quarterly

This is a worthy project given the growth of activity in Indian law, most of it due to conflicts between states and tribes over gaming and treaty rights, issues proving to be a bonanza for the legal profession and likely to be with us for a long time.

The editor of this new series, John R. Wunder, is well fitted for the task, given his record of research and publication. Volume one's dozen essays, all previously in print, offer something for every reader. Particularly impressive are Joseph C. Burke's "the Cherokee Cases," Wunder's own "No More Treaties," and Sidney L. …

Review Of Plains Indian History And Culture: Essays On Continuity And Change By John C. Ewers, Herbert T. Hoover

Great Plains Quarterly

Twelve chapters form a collection of essays mainly about northern Great Plains tribal cultures and experiences with non-Indians in the past. The omission of a summary essay at the end indicates an absence of unifying themes. Topics related to tribal relations include the clothing of women, women's roles in intertribal wars, the creation of maps by tribal soldiers, and the goals of inter-tribal warfare. Subjects pertaining to Indian-white relations include reciprocal ethnic images, symbols of chief-making by outsiders, reasons for tribal participation in the fur trade, and consequences of disease epidemics.

All chapters originally appeared elsewhere, but their publication under …

Feature Folio Images Of Great Plains Train Travel

Great Plains Quarterly

Images of Great Plains Train Travel (8 pages)

Title And Contents- Spring 1998

Great Plains Quarterly

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

SPRING 1998 VOL. 18 NO.2

CONTENTS

LITERATURES OF THE GREAT PLAINS: AN INTRODUCTION Francis W. Kaye

A CULTURAL DUET: ZITKALA SA AND THE SUN DANCE OPERA P. Jane Hafen

WOMEN WRITING ABOUT FARM WOMEN Becky Faber

GENDERED LANDSCAPES: SYNERGISM OF PLACE AND PERSON IN CANADIAN PRAIRIE DRAMA Anne F. Nothof

THE CORPORATE FARMING DEBATE IN THE POST-WORLD WAR II MIDWEST Jon Lauck

REVIEW ESSAY: HARVEST SONGS AND ELEGIAC NOTES Linda Ray Pratt

A review of Constance Coiner, Better Red: The Writing and Resistance of Tillie OLsen and Meridel Le Sueur, and Nora

Ruth Roberts, Three Radical Women …

Review Of Myths And Traditions Of The Arikara Indians By Douglas R. Parks, Tressa Berman

Great Plains Quarterly

Once again, Douglas Parks has offered an unsurpassed account of Arikara oral traditions by carefully selecting and elaborating upon his earlier, though less accessible, Traditional Narratives of the Arikara Indians (University of Nebraska Press, 1991, in four volumes). Parks's careful English translations of a range of Arikara narratives fulfill the interests of specialists and non-specialists alike through detailed descriptions of both stories and storytellers. Old stories become infused with new life as we learn more about the narrators themselves and the various performative contexts in which stories get told. If this was an attempt on Parks's part to bring the …

Review Of After Wounded Knee: Correspondence Of Major And Surgeon John Vance Lauderdale While Serving With The Army Occupying The Pine Ridge Reservation, 1890-1891 Edited By Jerry Green, Michael D. Berndt

Great Plains Quarterly

When scholars have covered events like the Wounded Knee Massacre comprehensively, the record of an unlikely observer or indirect participant can provide a fresh and valuable perspective. The correspondence of John Vance Lauderdale offers the views of one surgeon at the Pine Ridge Reservation whose participation in the Native American stereotypes of the time is complicated by his involvement in the aftermath of the Massacre and his personal interaction with individual Lakota.

To reconstruct Lauderdale's situation, Jerry Green offers an extensive introduction divided into three sections dealing with the surgeon's personal background, the medical department's practices, and the conditions on …

Review Of Garth Brooks: The Road Out Of Santa Fe By Matt O'Meilia, Kent Blaser

Great Plains Quarterly

Garth Brooks has been a musical phenomenon. By various counts, admittedly unreliable and difficult to verify, his record sales between 1989 and 1996 topped sixty million, surpassing those of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson and making him the best selling solo musical act ever. Brooks not only dominated the country music genre; he is often credited with being the main force behind the country music revival of the 1990s, even with being a key factor in the overall growth of the popular music industry early in the decade.

Brooks is an important figure for students of the American West and …

Review Of Frederic Remington And Turn-Of-The-Century America By Alexander Nemerov, H.W. Brands

Great Plains Quarterly

Readers of this book will learn a great deal about contemporary art criticism, a modest although unquantifiable (and mostly unverifiable) amount about Frederic Remington, and very little about the American West. The author, an art historian, applies a postmodernist, Freudian analysis to the work of the popular painter, sculptor, and illustrator. He concedes that the multiple meanings he reads into Remington's work probably escaped the consciousness of the artist himself. But not to worry: "The meanings of which the artist is not conscious are often those that are most powerfully revelatory of the work's historical moment."

Readers who can get …