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Notes And News- Summer 1981

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Notes and News

Christlieb Gallery: Opening And Dedication

Flandreau Santee Videotape Project

Czech Heritage Program

Center Governing Board

New Center Publications

American Pioneer Landscapes Symposium

Atlas Of The Lewis And Clark Expedition Planned

Review Of The Great Plains: Environment And Culture Edited By Brian W. Blouet And Frederick C. Luebke, John F. Davis

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This collection of twelve essays presents a selection of the offerings to the 1977 symposium on the culture heritage of the plains sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies.

It was probably Walter Prescott Webb's famous The Great Plains (1931) that sparked interest in the study of the region. This interest has gathered momentum during the last two decades and has stimulated many publications on various aspects of the plains and its subdivisions. The study of the region is obviously not the sole preserve of anyone discipline; Webb, Kraenzel, and others have shown that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary …

Review Of William H. Ashley: Enterprise And Politics In The Trans-Mississippi West By Richard M. Clokey, David J. Wishart

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Richard Clokey's biography of William Ashley is the product of fifteen years of research. The time was well spent; this is a thorough, perceptive, and interesting study of a man who played an important role in the early development of the American West. Perhaps more could have been made of Ashley in the existential sense, giving the reader more insight into his personality, but as a historian (and not a psychohistorian) Clokey understandably chose to emphasize the public rather than the private man. Still, Ashley emerges from his actions as a man who "sought respect and admiration and,. .. projected …

Review Of The Peace Chiefs Of The Cheyennes By Stan Hoig, John C. Ewers

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Stan Hoig here retraces a critical half-century of Cheyenne history from the tribe's first treaty with the United States in 1825 to the settlement of the traditionally nomadic northern and southern Cheyenne upon separate reservations in present day Montana and Oklahoma. The uniqueness of this book lies in its emphasis upon the roles played by some seventeen chiefs in serving the interests of their tribe through peaceful means. As did George Bent before him, Hoig points out that among the Cheyenne the recognized chiefs were not the young war leaders, but were mature men who assumed the more difficult role …

Review Of Comparative Frontiers: A Proposal For Studying The American West By Jerome O. Steffen, Leonard T. Guelke

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In this short, readable book Jerome Steffen puts forward a framework for the comparative study of frontier societies of the American West. The foundation of Steffen's proposal is the idea that frontier activity can be construed as a contest between the demands of the environment and the principles and practices that settlers brought with them to the frontier. The outcome of this contest, Steffen argues, will largely determine whether changes in the character of frontier societies should be classified as modal or fundamental. In Steffen's words, "Modal change usually represented an altered overt manifestation of a practice or belief whose …

Review Of The British And Irish In Oklahoma By Patrick J. Blessing, Wilbur S. Shepperson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

To suggest accurately the impact of the British-Irish immigration on Oklahoma is a difficult and perhaps an impossible task. Eighteenth-century Americans were primarily of British-Irish stock, and the immigration movement increased throughout the nineteenth century. Between 1815 and 1914 some 14 million persons from the United Kingdom arrived in the United States. The British-Irish were also the most heterogeneous of all immigrant groups. They rarely cooperated in attempting American settlement, and their speech, culture, and ideology have rendered them the most difficult nationality to isolate and study historically. As a whole, migrants from the United Kingdom found immigration a less …

Review Of The Blacks In Oklahoma By Jimmie Lewis Franklin, Arvarh E. Strickland

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The history of black people in Oklahoma is both typical and atypical of the black experience in America. Some black Oklahomans had a slave experience, but they were mostly the slaves of the Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory. When emancipation came, these freedmen, unlike the former slaves in other slave-holding areas, shared in land distribution. Blacks were also among the Sooners who participated in the land rush when the Oklahoma Territory was opened to settlement.

For a time many Afro-Americans were led to hope that the millenarian black nationalist dream of an all-black state, which had not been …

Review Of Folklore From Kansas: Customs, Beliefs, And Superstitions By William E. Koch, Roger L. Welsch

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The labor that Bill Koch has put into this volume is heroic. For those of us who study the plains, it is truly a valuable contribution. There are more than five thousand items, maps, tables, charts, and an astonishing inventory of collectors and informants. Each item is documented by sex, age, urban-rural orientation of the informant, and the year the item was collected. I am delighted that this impressive corpus has been made available to us. There is no question but that scholars will long be grateful to Koch for his effort.

Now, anyone who reads book reviews regularly knows …

Lawrence Goodwyn And Nebraska Populism: A Review Of Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment In America By Lawrence Goodwyn, Robert W. Cherny

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Lawrence Goodwyn's book Democratic Promise is an important contribution to our understanding of the nature of Populism. Reviewers have termed it "brilliant" and "comprehensive" and "the new standard against which all future efforts must be measured."¹ Goodwyn does, indeed, provide the reader with insights into the nature of Populism that are available nowhere else. Unfortunately, his work also has serious flaws, most obviously in his handling of the Populist movement in Nebraska but ultimately pervading the entire book. The student of Populism must be aware of the flaws but ought not dismiss the work as a whole, for its …

Agricultural Pioneering In Dakota: A Case Study, Gilbert C. Fite

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In recent years many historians have increasingly turned their attention to what might be called microhistory. Rather than studying broad topics in a sweeping and comprehensive manner, they have preferred to examine a county, a city, political or social groups within a locality, or an individual firm or institution. The aim has been to present history from the grassroots or the sidewalks-a people-oriented history, so to speak. As a result of such works, historical understanding has been greatly enhanced.¹

Little serious microhistory, however, has been done on pioneer agriculture, farm life, and standards of living. While there have been …

Title And Contents- Spring 1981

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Great Plains Quarterly

Spring 1981 Vol. 1 No.2

CONTENTS

THE WHITE MUSTANG OF THE PRAIRIES Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence

MULFORD AND BOWER: MYTH AND HISTOR Y IN THE EARLY WESTERN William A. Bloodworth, Jr.

THE HEIRS OF JAMES C. MALIN: A GRASSLAND HISTORIOGRAPHY Allan G. Bogue

BOOK REVIEWS

Crossing Frontiers: Papers in American

and Canadian Western Literature

The American West: New Perspectives,

New Dimensions

The Sioux: A Critical Bibliography

The Emigrant Indians of Kansas: A

Critical Bibliography

The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture

The Fur Trade of the American West,

1807-1840: A Geographical Synthesis

Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi

West, 1840-1880

The …

The White Mustang Of The Prairies, Elizabeth Atwood-Lawrence

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One of the most vivid and symbolically expressive legends in the annals of the American West is that of the White Mustang. Inhabiting the vast reaches of the western plains, the Stallion was said to have "paced from the mesas of Mexico to the Badlands of the Dakotas and even beyond, from the Brazos bottoms of eastern Texas to parks in the Rocky Mountains," during an interval extending from about 1825 to 1889.¹ Alternately known as the "White Steed of the Prairies," the "Pacing White Stallion," the "Phantom White Horse," and "Ghost Horse of the Plains," his story occurs …

Review Of The Horse In Blackfoot Indian Culture By John C. Ewers, Mary Jane Schneider

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The reprinting of The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture makes it possible for a new generation of plains anthropologists and historians to savor this book, long a basic reference. When Ewers began fieldwork on the Blackfoot Reservation in 1941, one of his concerns was the description of the role of the horse in Blackfoot and Plains Indian culture. Although concerned primarily with the Blackfoot, he also assembled pertinent ethnographic and historical data from other tribes.

Beginning with a general review of the acquisition of horses by North American Indians, the first chapter ends with a discussion of the acquisition of …

Mulford And Bower: Myth And History In The Early Western, William A. Bloodworth Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

With the exception of commentary on Owen Wister and The Virginian (1902), surprisingly little has been written about popular western novels published before world War I.¹ Yet it was writers following in the wake of The Virginian's popularity who really developed and defined the mass-audience western of commercial prospects and formulaic content. B. M. Bower, Clarence Mulford, William McCleod Raine, and Charles Alden Seltzer prepared the way for the later and greater popularity of Zane Grey, whose books first became best-sellers between 1912 and 1917; for the prolific productions of pulp writers like Max Brand after 1918; and …

Notes And News- Spring 1981

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

NOTES & NEWS

DIRECTOR ON LEAVE

NEW CENTER PUBLICATIONS

JOURNALS OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION

CHRISTLIEB COLLECTION OF WESTERN ART

AMEN FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

THE 1982 SYMPOSIUM: CALL FOR PAPERS

SENATOR HRUSKA GIFT

Review Of The Black Towns By Norman L. Crockett, Lawrence H. Larsen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the fifty years after the Civil War, black leaders founded some sixty predominantly black communities in the United States. Most were located in the rural South or on the central Great Plains. Most failed within a short time, leaving behind shattered dreams and few, if any, remains. Norman L. Crockett examines five of these communities in his new book, The Black Towns: Nicodemus in Kansas, Mound Bayou in Mississippi, and Langston, Clearview, and Boley in Oklahoma.

Crockett, who says that studies of fragmentary records indicate that these towns were fairly typical, believes that the rhetoric and behavior of …

Review Of The Sioux: A Critical Bibliography By Herbert T. Hoover & The Emigrant Indians Of Kansas: A Critical Bibliography By William E. Unrau, Francis Paul Prucha

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library is publishing a series of brief bibliographies, of which eighteen have now appeared. They cover topical aspects of Indian history-for example, demography, federal Indian policy, and missions-and particular tribes or groups of tribes. All the volumes follow a similar format. There is an alphabetical listing of roughly two hundred important works, with a shorter list of works suitable for a basic library collection. Writings recommended for beginners and for high school students are also marked. Preceding the full list is a historiographical essay of some thirty to …

Review Of Crossing Frontiers: Papers In American And Canadian Western Literature Edited By Dick Harrison, George Wolf

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Crossing Frontiers asks its readers to think comparatively about the literature of the Canadian and American Wests. The practice, as these proceedings of the 1978 "Crossing Frontiers" conference show, tends to loosen the grip of parochial notions of what "western" literature is and how it ought to be studied. The conference's six major papers, intelligently introduced and edited by Dick Harrison, are presented here along with the critiques and summations of a distinguished group of Canadian and American scholars. The volume conveys the intellectual excitement participants experienced at Banff in April 1978, and it reveals the status of comparative work …

Review Of In Search Of Canaan: Black Migration To Kansas, 1879-80 By Robert B. Athearn, Walter Weare

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Beginning in the spring of 1879 and continuing through most of 1880, thousands of former slaves (estimates range from six thousand to sixty thousand) fled the American South, determined to resettle on the "holy ground" of John Brown's Kansas. This dramatic "Exodus" captured the attention of journalists and politicians at the time, setting off a U.S. Senate investigation in 1880, and over the decades has held a mild fascination for historians. More recently, a number of scholars have caught the "Kansas Fever," most notably Robert Athearn in this volume and Nell Irvin Painter in her Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas …

Review Of Deserts On The March By Paul B. Sears, R. Douglas Hurt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1935, the worst Dust Bowl year, Paul B. Sears, then professor of botany at the University of Oklahoma, published Deserts on the March, a succinctly written book that directed public attention toward the growing menace of soil erosion in the United States. By 1980, Deserts on the March had become a classic ecological study; it is currently in the tenth printing and fourth edition. Sears, now retired from his position of chairman of the conservation program at Yale University, has rewritten much of the original text, but his message is the same today as it was nearly fifty …

The Heirs Of James C. Malin: A Grassland Historiography, Allan G. Bogue

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the early pages of his important novel of western life, Zury, The Meanest Man in Spring County, Joseph Kirkland brought the Prouder family to the blazed tree that marked the location of the Illinois land that was to be their new home, the "woods behind" and the "prairie before" them. Herbert Quick halted yOl1ng Jacobus Vandemark on the bluffs above Dubuque, where the first great rolling sweep of the prairie grassland lay spread before him, and reported that a great surge of emotion coursed through the boy. John Ise pictured the covered wagon of his parents, Rosie and Henry …

Review Of Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 By Julie Roy Jeffrey, Sandra L. Myres

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The exploration and settlement of the American West have long been subjects of interest to American historians and their readers, but until recently the frontier was viewed as a predominantly male experience. Frederick Jackson Turner's frontiers were explored, conquered, and settled by men, and Turner's successors kept to the male theme. The few women who were mentioned in western history texts and general studies could be counted on the fingers of one hand-Sacajawea, Narcissa Whitman, and Calamity Jane-with an occasional sprinkling of brave pioneer mothers and mining camp prostitutes with hearts of gold.

In the wake of the feminist movement, …

Review Of Landlord William Scully By Homer E. Socolofsky, Leslie Hewes

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The main concern of this book is with the American holdings of the Irish landowner, William Scully. The story continues virtually to the present time when the American estate of 225,000 acres at Scully's death in 1906 had shrunk but little to 175,000 acres in the hands of his heirs. The report is notable for the wealth of business details uncovered, from which the account is largely fashioned.

One may wonder how different things might have been if Scully's intention to become a resident farmer on his recently acquired land in Illinois in the early 1850s had been realized. Instead, …

Review Of The Fur Trade Of The American West, 1807- 1840: A Geographical Synthesis By David J. Wishart, Doyce B. Nunis Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The fur trade of the Trans-Missouri West has long been a fertile field of historical investigation, effectively plowed for almost a century by scholars, both trained and lay. Taking those familiar materials, Wishart has produced a book that brings a new and challenging dimension to that history. Indeed, his synthesis calls for a new interpretation, namely, that the fur men's rapacious exploitation of the fur resources of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains "was destructive to the physical environment and to the native inhabitants alike." The romantic image of the buckskin-clad mountain man at the cutting edge of the nation's …

Review Of The American West: New Perspectives, New Dimensions Edited By Jerome O. Steffen, James R. Shortridge

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One learns to be suspicious of essay collections. Not only does article quality usually vary, but often the issues addressed are so disparate that an editor can write of an encompassing theme only by using the vaguest of terms. Using these points as criteria, The American West is a better-than-average collection. Editor Jerome Steffen does not say how the eight essays were assembled, but, with one exception, the quality is very good and, with another exception, an important central theme is followed. Steffen asserts that western history needs new and enlarged perspectives if it is to escape its label of …

Review Of "Paper Talk": Charlie Russell's American West By Brian W. Dippie, Robert Spence

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

After much too long a wait, we have now a second volume of Charles M. Russell's inimitable "paper talk" -as he called his illustrated letters, verses, Christmas greetings, and similar personalia. The first was assembled by Frederic Renner in 1962 for the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, and has long been out of print.

Russell (1864-1926), the self-taught cowboy artist of the northern plains frontier, had a wide circle of friends and he was characteristically loyal to them. His correspondence is surprisingly extensive (despite his disclaimer that "writing ain't my strong holt"). Brian Dippie has performed a …

Review Of The Pirst Polish Americans: Silesian Settlements In Texas By T. Lindsay Baker, Maria Starczewska- Lambasa

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Though sporadic arrivals of Poles into the United States had started much earlier, it was onl y in 1854 that Polish immigration led to the establishment of the first self-contained Polish community and parish. It was perhaps a trick played by history that the first settlements of Silesian Poles sprang up in the San Antonio area of Texas rather than in an area such as Connecticut, which in many respects is geographically more like Poland. The large stream of Polish immigrants arriving in this country in the latter part of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth moved to …

Review Of Western Movies Edited By William T. Pilkington And Don Graham, Michael T. Isenberg

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Western movies have been around so long and captured such wide audiences precisely because they reflect and comment upon some of the most enduring features of American culture. We have all grown up with the commonalities (and banalities) of the stock western: the noble hero, the comic or weakling sidekick, the schoolmarm, the villain. If these stereotypes were all there were to it, the western genre would long since have gone the route of, say, the novels of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth.

The value of westerns, like that of many other genres, is that they speak to present concerns as well …

Notes And News- Winter 1981

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Notes and News

The Center For Great Plains Studies

The Christlieb Collection Of Western Art

A New Edition Of Journals Of The Lewis And Clark Expedition

The 1981 Symposium: "American Pioneer Landscapes"

The 1982 Symposium: Call For Papers

Review Of Frederic Remington And The West: With The Eye Of The Mind By Ben Merchant Vorpahl, William H. Goetzmann

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book, by the editor of the Frederic Remington-Owen Wister letters, is a strangely disappointing work on a promising subject. It is not the usual picture book of Remington paintings, nor is it really a biography. Rather it is an attempt to recreate Remington's intellectual, emotional, and artistic perceptions as they changed through his life. This is a laudable attempt. Unfortunately, the author is most often cryptic, confused, and much given to the jargon of abstraction. As a consequence any reader must bring a good deal of information to the book or it will be virtually meaningless. Possibly a good …