International and Area Studies Commons^™

Empirical Valuation Of Prairie Potholes: Five Case Studies, Jay A. Leitch, Brett Hovde

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Dollar values were estimated for four prairie potholes and a wetland complex in North Dakota. Assessing these values required careful consideration of the ecological values and the societal values on a site-specific basis. Assessments of value were made from four perspectives owner, user, regional, and social. Values of specific outputs and total values varied among the five study sites. Annual per hectare values varied from the $10 owner value for the Nome wetland to the $921 regional value for the Alice wetland. The greatest analytical obstacle to obtaining more refined estimates was the physical and biological data needed to technically …

Conference Report: Politics And Culture Of The Great Plains, Deb Forssman

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln sponsored its 20th Annual Symposium, "Politics and Culture of the Great Plains," April 11-13, 1996, in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Symposium was co-chaired by Professor John Hibbing, Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Professor John Peters, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of Tennessee-Knoxville. The Symposium was conducted under the leadership of Professor Ann Mari May, Acting Director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. More than 500 people were involved in the various activities and events of the Symposium.

To open the Symposium, Morris …

News And Notes - Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 1996

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Contents:

Call for papers
Conferences
Paul A. Olson Seminars in Great Plains Studies
NEH Grant for Encyclopedia
Book Awards
Fulbrights and Other Awards
Great Plains Research Science Awards
In Memoriam

Review Of Peopling The Plains: Who Settled Where In Frontier Kansas By James Shortridge, D. Aidan Mcquillan

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Kansas was born in the bloody prelude to the Civil War, a contested territory between North and South. The settlement frontier had penetrated only the eastern third of the state before war broke out; the western two-thirds saw the frontier push westward for several decades after the war, from 1865 to 1885. In the state's extreme western parts the frontier expanded and contracted several times between 1890 and 1930. James Shortridge sets out to explore the origins of Kansas cultural geography with such questions as: Who were these "first effective" settlers on the Kansas frontier? Where did they come from? …

Review Of A Time To Lose: Representing Kansas In Brown V. Board Of Education By Paul E. Wilson, Anna Shavers

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education became for many a time to reflect on the wisdom of the Court's decision and to critique its success in desegregating America's public schools. Paul E. Wilson, a law professor at the University of Kansas, has written A Time to Lose not so much to address those issues but a more personal question: why had he argued before the Supreme Court on the wrong side? In his dedication, Wilson sets forth the book's tone and goal: "For Harriet and our children, who believe I was on …

Review Of Rural Development In The United States: Connecting Theory, Practice, And Possibilities By William A. Galston And Karen J. Baehler, Don Macke

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

William Galston and Karen Baehler provide an excellent comprehensive overview of rural development policy and approaches. Their book is enriched by Galston's perspective as a Clinton White House domestic policy advisor and the Who's Who of rural development experts who reviewed and contributed to it.

Part one offers a progressive, expansive panorama of rural development in the United States in the 1990s. Particularly fine is the first chapter's review of critical trends and policy choices. The balance of the work is a textbook approach to seven fundamental sectors within the rural economy: natural resources, manufacturing, services, tourism, the elderly, high …

Niches Of Homelessness In Rural Nebraska: Bolstering Existing Understandings, Sharon Lord Gaber

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Rural homelessness, particularly in the Great Plains region, is under-researched. Most current understandings of homelessness are based on research in metropolitan regions. This paper suggests that the general structural frameworks. which have been developed to model homelessness in metropolitan areas. can serve as a useful starting point for understanding rural homelessness in Nebraska. By using a "key informant" survey of homeless service providers in Nebraska it is clear that there are several niches of homeless persons (Native Americans, migrant workers. meat-packing workers, and transients) present in Nebraska that are not discussed in the existing literature.

Review Of Politics In The Postwaramerican West Edited By Richard Lowitt, Clive S. Thomas

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This volume is a welcome addition to the sparse literature on western politics. Its approach is threefold. First, it views postwar western politics from a historical perspective as opposed to that of political science or economics; and editor Richard Lowitt has gathered together mostly historians to write the chapters. Second, instead of examining western politics comparatively by themes or by major events affecting political developments, the book unfolds state by state. There are a total of nineteen chapters coinciding with the volume's definition of the West as the nineteen states from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean, including Alaska …

Review Of Geologic Field Trips In Nebraska And Adjacent Parts Of Kansas And South Dakota Edited By Robert F. Diffendal, Jr. And Charles A. Flowerday, James E. Martin

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This guidebook was published in conjunction with the Geological Society of America's North-Central and South-Central sectional meeting held in Lincoln during the spring of 1995. As a result, the diversity of the field trips mirrors the wide geological interests represented at such a gathering. Subjects range from paleontology and stratigraphy to engineering geology. All of the articles provide important geological data often unobtainable in print elsewhere. Eleven field trips were presented during the GSA meeting; two are not included in the guidebook and are available separately, although the source of these materials is not apparent.

Field sites and road logs …

Review Of Wild Animals And Settlers On The Great Plains By Eugene D. Fleharty, Charles A. Flowerday

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Wild Animals and Settlers on the Great Plains is an informative but flawed book. As an example of environmental history written by a biologist unacquainted with the fundamentals of doing history, it fails to offer any theory (or theories) of history governing the time and place under scrutiny. What it does provide is a huge amount of information drawn from diaries, letters, and newspapers in an inadequately edited form. Lacking primary quantitative data, Eugene Fleharty, a zoologist at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, painstakingly provides a great deal of qualitative, albeit anecdotal, information about Euro-American settlement in Kansas …

Review Of Wetland And Environmental Applications Of Gis Edited By John G. Lyon And Jack Mccarthy, Scott E. Richert

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Wetlands are commonly defined as areas periodically or permanently inundated with water and typically characterized by vegetation requiring saturated soil for growth and reproduction. They have become increasingly important in environmental research as their benefits to environmental systems (wildlife habitat, flood control, for example) have become better understood. Wetland and Environmental Applications of GIS is an original contribution to the study of wetlands and other aquatic environments because it is the first book to address the inventory, monitoring, and management of wetlands and other surface waters by using geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and computer modeling.

The volume is …

Table Of Contents - Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 1996

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Contents:

Articles

News and notes

Five-year index

Review Of Future Harvest: Pesticide-Free Farming By Jim Bender, George E. Ham

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Jim Bender provides the rationale for pursuing pesticide-free farming and a detailed model of conversion based on his experiences on his own 642 acre farm in southeast Nebraska. Reviewing such deeply ingrained characteristics of conventional agricultural systems in the Plains as separation of livestock from crop production, minimal crop diversity, and the lack of multi-year crop rotations, he recommends that conversion be undertaken gradually over several years as more experience is gained with pesticide-free systems.

In preparing for conversion from conventional to pesticide-free agriculture, one must learn to build terraces and waterways to control soil erosion, to rotate and diversify …

Fate Of Wetlands Associated With The Central Nebraska Irrigation Canal System, Jason D. Ekstein, Scott E. Hygnstrom

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Changes in wetlands in the vicinity of the Phelps and £65 canals operated by Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District in South-central Nebraska were examined using aerial photographs taken on seven occasions from 1938 to 1981. According to previous research, nearly 90% of the original wetlands within the surrounding Rainwater Basin were destroyed or altered by draining and filling between 1900 and 1980. Within a zone extending 10 kilometers on each side of the Phelps and £65 canals, however, we observed an increase in the number and total area of wetlands, which we hypothesize to have been caused by …

Five-Year Index - Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 1996

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

five-year index

Leisure And Aging In Southern Saskatchewan, Ralph Nilson, David Weaver, Carlton Yoshioka

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This study examined the psychological and socio-economic dimensions of the leisure experience patterns of the expanding older adult population in the Canadian Great Plains or Prairie region. Survey data were collected from a random sample of 2,969 of persons 65 years of age and older residing in southern Saskatchewan. Results indicated that older adults have a wide range of leisure activities with involvement in numerous individual and community related pursuits. However, when differentiated by season, winter activities tended to be passive, solitary, inexpensive, and home-based activities. Moreover, important psychological dimensions in perceived health and activity of older adults did not …

Review Of Atlas Of Oklahoma Climate By Howard L. Johnson And Claude E. Duchon, John A. Harrington Jr.

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Thematic atlases depicting aspects of past weather events and climatic summaries are an important resource for researchers, educators, and the general public. The authors of the Atlas of Oklahoma Climate have produced an engaging text providing a good overview of a subject about which both are highly knowledgeable: Howard Johnson serves as an Assistant State Climatologist in the Oklahoma Climatological Survey; Claude Duchon is a Professor in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma.

The atlas is divided into six major sections: an "Introduction"; "Geography and Oklahoma's Weather and Climate"; "Annual Climate"; "Seasonal Climate"; "Wind and Humidity"; and …

Review Of Anthropology, Public Policy, And Native Peoples In Canada Edited By Noel Dyck And James B. Waldram, Adrian Tanner

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In their chapter in Anthropology, Public Policy, and Natives Peoples in Canada, John O'Neil et al. state that anthropology "has affected policy development in virtually every sector of northern community life except medicine" (p. 216). Despite this observation, the book generally tends to stress Canadian anthropology's overall difficulties in aboriginal policy-making. It examines some of anthropology's most sensitive and difficult issues in this area critically, suggesting an ambivalent relationship towards the policy-making process.

The book's focus on anthropology's problems in contributing to aboriginal public policy is established in the editors' introduction, which examines several sources of these difficulties. A …

Western Meadowlark Impaled On Barbed-Wire Fence, Lawrence D. Igl

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Recently, Allen and Ramirez (1990, Wilson Bull. 102:553-558) summarized known observations of bird mortality associated with barbed-wire fences. Most reported cases of bird mortality from barbed-wire fences were of non-passerine birds. On 16 June 1993 in Slope County in western North Dakota (NW 1/4, Sec. 10 T134N R103W), I found a dead western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) with its right wing impaled by a barb on the middle strand of a three-strand barbed-wire fence. Barbs on the wire were spaced about 12-15 cm apart. The bird was adult-sized, but plumage characteristics indicated that it was a young-of-the-year with well-developed …

Second Record Of White Ibis In North Dakota, Jennifer W. Marlow, Lawrence D. Igl, Melody R. Hartman

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

The breeding range of the white ibis (Eudocimus albus) in the United States is generally restricted to coastal regions along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean north to Virginia (Frederick et al. 1996, Conserv. BioI. 10:203-216). During the breeding season, the white ibis is nomadic and highly opportunistic in its use of unpredictable food resources (Frederick et al. 1996; Bildstein 1993, White ibis: wetland wanderer. Smithsonian Inst. Press, Washington, D.C.). There is one previous record of a white ibis in North Dakota on 4 August 1954 (Gammell and Huenecke 1955, Audubon Field Notes 9:34-36; Lokemoen 1979, …

Review Of Willa Cather's Transforming Vision: New France And The American Northeast By Gary Brienzo, Richard Nielsen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Using a fine-tuned blend of textual criticism, biography, and primary research, Gary Brienzo sheds light on the importance of the American Northeast and New France on Willa Cather's life and art.

Brienzo sees Cather's artistic life as a search for a "quiet center," a unified, comforting vision, given focus by an appreciation she developed for the "domestic qualities that enhanced life." He credits Sarah Orne Jewett for providing Cather this "alternative literary tradition," which celebrated woman-centered communities and the power of domestic ritual. Brienzo details Cather's discovery of Quebec and the appeal of its French traditions, for there she recognized …

Review Of Soul In The Stone: Cemetery Art From America's Heartland By John Gary Brown, Robert Duncan

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

John Gary Brown, a professional photographer from Lawrence, Kansas, has collected over a period of time a variety of unique photographs documenting examples of cemetery art found in the central states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico. The author, through his photographs and to some degree his text, illustrates the rich mixture of personal efforts that stone sculptors and vernacular artists have developed in this special art form. While cemetery art is public, the photographs Brown presents, through his use of a multiplicity of artistic images, often suggest particularly private stories. Brown begins …

Mari Sandoz's Portrait Of An Artist's Youth: Robert Henri's Nebraska Years, Helen Winter Stauffer

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Robert Henri's life story would have appealed to Mari Sandoz even if he were not an important early twentieth-century American artist. Robert Henri (born Robert Henry Cozad) came from a time, a place, and a family that at first glance seem unlikely to have produced an avant garde painter of landscapes, cityscapes, and portraits; it was the sort of paradox Sandoz liked to explore. That Henri had spent much of his youth in her native Nebraska in a family headed by a magnetic and dominating man not unlike her own father also interested her. That the family left Nebraska in …

Review Of The Way To The West: Essays On The Central Plains By Elliott West, A. Yvette Huginnie

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In one delightful volume, Elliott West offers four engaging, far-ranging essays on the Central Plains. Originally presented in 1993 as the ninth annual Calvin Horn Lectures on Western History and Culture at the University of New Mexico, these expanded essays are now available to a wider audience. The Horn lectures enabled West, a distinguished social historian, to explore some new aspects of western American history, specifically environmental and Native American studies. Interweaving secondary materials from a multiplicity of disciplines-anthropology, ecology and environmental studies, history, literature, sociology-with ample primary materials, West 'presents engrossing essays from which we can all benefit. He …

Marl Sandoz's Slogum House Greed As Woman, Glenda Riley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In her 1937 novel, Slogum House, Mari Sandoz turned the usual stereotype of greed and cupidity on its head. Instead of presenting a voracious male rancher aggrandizing his land holdings to the detriment of hard-working homesteaders, Sandoz created Regula Haber Slogum, a grasping woman who eventually owns nearly an entire county, which she has managed to have named after her family. Although Gulla, as she is known, controls most of Slogum County, she continues brutally to foreclose mortgages and force sheriffs' sales, even during the depression years of the 1930s.

Despite this depiction of what Katharine Mason has called …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

AN INTRODUCTION (Barbara Rippey; John R. Wunder)

"SHE DOES NOT WRITE LIKE A HISTORIAN": MARl SANDOZ AND THE OLD AND NEW WESTERN HISTORY (Betsy Downey)

MARl SANDOZ'S SLOGUM HOUSE: GREED AS WOMAN (Glenda Riley)

RECASTING EPIC TRADITION: THE DISPOSSESSED AS HERO IN SANDOZ'S CRAZY HORSE AND CHEYENNE AUTUMN (Lisa R. Lindell)

MARl SANDOZ'S PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST'S YOUTH: ROBERT HENRI'S NEBRASKA YEARS (Helen Winter Stauffer)

BOOK REVIEWS

Prairie University: A History of the University of Nebraska

Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas

Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains: Years of Readjustment , 1920,1990

Lakol Wokiksuye: …

Marl Sandoz Nebraska Sandhills Author A Centennial Recognition, Barbara Rippey, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

1996 marks the centennial year of Mari Susette Sandoz's birth to Swiss immigrant parents, Mary and Jules Sandoz, on a homestead in Sheridan County, Nebraska. Mari, the oldest of the six children in the Sandoz family, was shaped and hardened by her father's temper and by bearing the brunt of hard physical work both outdoors on the homestead and as her mother's helper. The people of her neighborhood were the kind of people who not only witnessed but made history, the kind of people whose lives and stories could be transformed into literature. Red Cloud, Robert Henri, Crazy Horse, "Gulla …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

REVIEW ESSAYS

CALLS FOR PAPERS

Review Of The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities In The Modern West By Carl Abbott, Robert B. Fairbanks

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This important book initiates a new series on The Modern American West edited by Gerald D. Nash. In it the author not only documents the critical role cities have played in the development of the West since World War II, but claims that those cities really personify the three mythic images of the West as locus of democracy, opportunity, and individual fulfillment. Defining the West as all of the Great Plains and Pacific States, Carl Abbott examines mid-size cities as well as large, but concentrates on the impact of metropolises like Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston …

Review Of A Dose Of Frontier Soldiering: The Memoirs Of Corporal E. A. Bode, Frontier Regular Infantry, 1877-1882 Edited By Thomas T. Smith, Markku Henriksson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

For anyone interested in the "big picture" of what happened in the American West ten or fifteen years after the Civil War, Bode's memoirs will prove disappointing: he was not involved in any of the major campaigns in any meaningful way and reveals nothing not already known. If one is interested in a soldier's-although an exceptional one'sviews of some of his superior officers, or Indians, or mostly about the daily duties of an infantryman, Bode offers a good dose of "frontier soldiering." There is also useful primary material here on the 1870s and the social history of the military. Although …