International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of The Most Promising Young Officer: A Life Of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie By Michael D. Pierce, Michael L. Tate

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Michael D. Pierce has produced a credible and nicely written interpretation of Ranald Mackenzie's life. By focusing on the frontier years and placing this officer's experiences within the broader context of military events, he provides the reader a good sense of time and place. Pierce also successfully utilizes the standard source materials and moves well beyond Robert G. Carter's somewhat unreliable On the Border with Mackenzie (1935). Unfortunately, the personal dimensions of Mackenzie's thoughts and deeds will never be fully known because he was an intensely private man who left little documentation about himself. Even his official reports tend to …

Review Of Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food On The Oregon Trail By Jacqueline Williams, Roger Welsch

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Williams uses original texts liberally-diaries, letters, contemporary published accounts, cookbooks-and a method I appreciate: voices from the past, rather than a modern voice telling us what voices from the past said. The book's illustrations and photos significantly add to the reader's understanding and appreciation of the severe demands of cookery on the Trail.

Review Of Ace Of Hearts: The Westerns Of Zane Grey By Arthur G. Kimball, Alan Wilkinson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This is a broad-ranging, thorough, relatively concise and useful book. It offers a reading of Grey that gets beyond the reputation-and beyond Riders of the Purple Sage. Moreover, it spells out what a serious reading of that most celebrated western suggests-a depth that belies Grey's rating as a "formulaic" writer. It also offers a direct response to a number of critics-Ann Ronald, Cynthia Hamilton, John G. Cawelti, among others-who have commented on Grey. Kimball finds much to disagree with but much to build on in his predecessors' work. He refutes their articulations of a Grey formula: if there is …

The Progressive Context Of The Nebraska Capitol The Collaboration Of Goodhue And Tack, Frederick C. Luebke

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Augustus Vincent Tack (1870-1949) was the first of eight artists who executed murals in the Nebraska state capitol. His involvement began in fall 1923, when he was asked by the architect, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (1869- 1924), to plan a program of mural decorations for the governor's suite of offices, located in the first part of the capitol to be completed. His murals were installed four years later, and the rooms were opened to the public on 1 January 1928. Tack's work was thus conceived, executed, and installed several years before the construction of the capitol was completed in 1932. At …

Review Of Following The Indian Wars: The Story Of The Newspaper Correspondents Among The Indian Campaigners By Oliver Knight, Todd Kerstetter

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Despite these criticisms, Knight's work has value. It offers insights into the daily rigors of nineteenth-century Army life and examines the sources from which much public knowledge of Indians flowed. Fans of military history may enjoy the book and may join the correspondents' armchair generalling, but readers interested in the correspondents and the history of journalism will have to wade through a lot of extraneous material to get what they want.

Review Of An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession Of The Nebraska Indians By David J. Wishart, Francis Paul Prucha

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This is a well-written and authoritative book, but it is not a pleasant book to read, for it is a story of unremitting sadness. It traces the nineteenth-century history of four Indian tribes whose homelands in 1800 covered what is now the eastern two-thirds of the state of Nebraska-the Omahas and the Otoe-Missourias along the Missouri River, the Pone as north of the Niobrara River near its mouth, and the Pawnees (in four bands) in the central area of the state.

Breaking The Silence Hymns And Folk Songs In O. E. Rølvaag's Immigrant Trilogy, Phillip R. Coleman-Hull

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In an essay written in 1933 Einar Haugen briefly mentions that "RØlvaag's most delicate observations take the form of music, and rhythmic sound becomes to him the highest form of beauty." Haugen refers merely to the sonorous qualities of the prairie and never delves into the songs-both Norwegian folk songs and hymns-that surface through O. E. RØlvaag's immigrant trilogy. Since 1933, critics have explored a multitude of themes related to Giants in the Earth, Peder Victorious, and Their Father's God, and much attention has been given to the issue of cultural integrity as espoused by RØlvaag. Language, religion, and folklore …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"SAME HORSE, NEW WAGON": TRADITION AND ASSIMILATION AMONG THE JEWS OF WICHITA, 1865-1930 (Hal Rothman)

BREAKING THE SILENCE: HYMNS AND FOLK SONGS IN O. E. RØLVAAG'S IMMIGRANT TRILOGY (Philip R. Coleman-Hull)

SENSE OF PLACE IN THE PRAIRIE ENVIRONMENT: SETTLEMENT AND ECOLOGY IN RURAL GEARY COUNTY, KANSAS (Nina Veregge)

HUNT, CAPTURE, RAISE, INCREASE: THE PEOPLE WHO SAVED THE BISON (Ken Zontek)

BOOK REVIEWS

The Cowboy: Representations of Labor in an American Work Culture

Soils in Archaeology: Landscape Evolution and Human Occupation

The Loner: Three Sketches of the Personal Life and Ideas of R. B. Bennett, 1870-1947

The Sioux and Other Native …

"Same Horse, New Wagon" Tradition And Assimilation Among The Jews Of Wichita, 1865,1930, Hal Rothman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Despite the emphasis on ethnicity and crosscultural contact that permeates the New Western History, western historians have neglected the Jews of the American West. Often mislabeled as German ethnics because of their surnames or ignored altogether, Jews of the interior West in particular have been left out of the intellectual revolution sweeping the field. Their modern demographic distribution in coastal and urban areas has been mistaken for their historic presence, and their contribution to local and regional culture has been overlooked. As a result, the Jews of large urban areas in the West have received the vast majority of scholarly …

Sense Of Place In The Prairie Environment Settlement And Ecology In Rural Geary County, Kansas, Nina Veregge

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Many people who drive across Kansas on the Interstate or on Route 50 see the state as a single, unchanging stretch of treeless plain. A more perceptive observer witnesses the gradual transition from the east to the west: from rolling hills and wooded vales to wide open grassland and sage plain; from corn to winter wheat; from farms to ranches and feedlots; from running streams to dry washes; from humidity on a summer day that is relieved only by constant wind to dry heat blown across grassland untempered by stream valley microclimates. It appears a seamless transition where distinctions are …

Review Of The End Of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety From The Old West To The New Deal By David M. Wrobel, Kathleen A. Boardman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

More than a decade before the 1890 Census, some Americans began to perceive that the frontier was disappearing; they worried that, with the closing of the frontier, the country might lose its tough and resourceful individualism, its ability to assimilate foreigners and forge democratic institutions, its safety valve and its future hopes-in short, its uniqueness. Soon this "frontier anxiety" pervaded American writing, speech, and thought. David M. Wrobel traces the theme of frontier anxiety and its variations in American journalism, political rhetoric and policy, literature and popular culture, and academic discussions from the 1880s to the 1930s. He shows that …

Hunt, Capture, Raise, Increase The People Who Saved The Bison, Ken Zontek

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Charles and Mollie Goodnight, C. J. "Buffalo" Jones, Frederick and Mary Dupuis, and Samuel Walking Coyote and his wife Sabine saved the bison. They hunted, caught, and raised bison calves that increased buffalo numbers at a time when the Great Plains monarchs clung desperately to a tenuous existence. Their remarkable stories, deserving of reiteration, cast light on four themes of Western history: proper recognition for front-line conservationists, the role of women, hunters as conservationists, and the profitability of species preservation.

Western bison conservation was not a matter of eastern politicians and scientists, such as Theodore Roosevelt and William Hornaday, legislating …

Review Of Owning Western History: A Guide To Collecting Rare Documents, Historical Letters, And Valuable Photographs From The Old West By Warren B. Anderson, Warren W. Caldwell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

As the reader will have surmised, this volume is about collecting. It might well have been titled, "Western History: Via Waste Paper, Photographs and Other Ephemera." Be warned, it is not concerned with literary debris, but rather the remains of defunct stock companies, failed businesses, "wanted posters," and seemingly an infinity of other secular paper.

There is little to review here. The book is unabashedly descriptive, anecdotal, and largely non-critical. None the less, it has the virtue of directing the scholar to many documents of "western" society that otherwise might be neglected, and the pay-off can be interesting.

Review Of The Orphan Trains: Placing Out In America By Marilyn Irvin Holt, Fred Erisman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One of the most haunting stories of the American West is the legend of the "orphan trains." Relating the practice of taking homeless children from the teeming cities and resettling them in the nation's heartland where they could grow and prosper as youngsters should, the story tacitly invokes some of the most potent of American myths-the Turner safety-valve theory, the Horatio Alger tale of the self-made person, and, more darkly, the lingering traces of Social Darwinism. The Orphan Trains strives to set the record straightnot to debunk the legend, but to give it its proper niche in western history. Emphasizing …

Review Of The Loner: Three Sketches Of The Personal Life And Ideas Of R. B. Bennett, 1870-1947 By P. B. Waite, Dale Jacobs

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The task of rehabilitating the reputation of former Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett is a formidable one. Nevertheless, that is P. B. Waite's goal in The Loner, a set of three "sketches" of Bennett's life. Originally given as the Joanne Goodman Lectures at the University of Western Ontario in 1991, these sketches encompass Bennett's earliest years at Hopewell Cape and the Miramichi, his years as a lawyer and rising politician in Calgary, and his years in Ottawa. The Loner is not, however, another biography of R. B. Bennett, according to Waite, but an attempt to explain "the personal …

Bluestem And Tussock Fire And Pastoralism In The Flint Hills Of Kansas And The Tussock Grasslands Of New Zealand, James F. Hoy, Thomas D. Isern

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The ghost of Lady Barker haunts public discourse on the question of burning tussock grassland in New Zealand. The image of this gentle English woman, author of the Canterbury classic Station Life in New Zealand, transformed into a pastoral pyromaniac professing "the exceeding joy of 'burning,'" is compelling. She contests with friends over who can set the most magnificent blaze, exults at solitary cabbage trees exploding into flame, and regrets that she was not there to see the first blaze rage across the plains. Of this ritual, she says, she and her friends "never were allowed to have half …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

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Not So Plain Art Of The American Prairies, Joni L. Kinsey

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Since the first European encounters with the grasslands of central North America, beginning with Coronado in the mid-sixteenth century, prairies have alternately confused, dismayed, overwhelmed, depressed, and inspired those who would contend with their contradictions. They have been described as being both nothing and everything, empty as well as vast, monotonous and endlessly varied. For those who saw them in their pristine state, prairies were often disorienting, a place to be lost, whereas today they have become the "heartland" where Americans look to find their truest identity. While such disparities have frustrated many writers who have attempted to convey something …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GRASSLANDS: AN INTRODUCTION (Kathleen H. Keeler)

BLUESTEM AND TUSSOCK: FIRE AND PASTORALISM IN THE FLINT HILLS OF KANSAS AND THE TUSSOCK GRASSLANDS OF NEW ZEALAND (James F. Hoy; Thomas D. Isern)

NOT SO PLAIN: ART OF THE AMERICAN PRAIRIES (Joni L. Kinsey)

BOOK REVIEWS

The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination

The Prairie in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry

A Guide to Kansas Mushrooms

Into the Wilderness Dreams: Exploration Narratives of the American West, 1500-1805

What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village

Yanktonai Sioux Water Colors: Cultural Remembrances of John Saul

The Flag in American …

Review Of The Political Economy Of North American Indians Edited By John H. Moore, Larry Burt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book consists primarily of essays that were first delivered before the Twelfth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences held in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1988. Billed as Marxist in perspective, it seeks to show that Indian history should be seen more as economic conflict than cultural clash.

In the introductory piece the editor provides an excellent overview of the history of political economy in general and its use in anthropology in particular. The articles that follow vary widely in length, scope, and quality. All somehow explain the motivation behind governmental policy, as well as developments within Indian communities, as …

Review Of Birger Sandzen: An Illustrated Biography By Emory Lindquist, Ann Davis

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Birger Sandzén Lindquist combines biography and art analysis. The first half of the book looks at Sandzen's early years and his decades at Bethany College. After a rich section of forty-nine color plates, the author turns to an examination of the influences on his painting, his methods, the response of art critics, the graphic work, and Sandzen's association with two friends as documented in correspondence. The overall result is a wellrounded picture of a positive adventurer, a regional painter whose work well deserves the recognition afforded it here.

"Who's Going To Dance With Somebody Who Calls You A Main Streeter" Communism, Culture, And Community In Sheridan County, Montana, 1918,1934, Gerald Zahavi

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

So began Logan's long career in Sheridan County. The year was 1930, and she had just arrived from North Dakota, a fresh Cum Laude graduate of Jamestown College. The social and cultural walls that divided the community were at once unambiguously defined for her-with a simple list. The good Catholics and Lutherans of Plentywood made sure that the custodians of their children's minds would be well insulated from the riffraff of the town-the liquor distillers, the bootleggers, and, of course, the reds. The social center of the community, the Farmer-Labor Templethe "Red Temple" to local conservatives-was generally off limits …

Contributions Of The Conservation Reserve Program To Populations Of Breeding Birds In North Dakota, Douglas H. Johnson, Lawrence Igl

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

Previous studies have shown that habitat provided by the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a feature of the 1985 farm bill, is used by many birds. The present study quantitatively assesses the importance of the CRP by estimating changes in breeding bird populations of North Dakota projected if CRP land would revert to cultivation. Of 18 species that were common in CRP or crop fields or both, 12 were more abundant in CRP habitats. Six of these species had suffered significant population declines during 1967-1990, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. In contrast, none of the six species that …

Ecological Genetics For The 21st Century, Bonnie S. Bowen

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

In the spring of 1991, the University of North Carolina hosted a series of seminars on the topic of ecological genetics. Five distinguished researchers, Montgomery Slatkin, Sara Via, Michael Lynch, Janis Antonovics, and Joseph Travis, were each invited to present two talks: one a general overview of a research area in contemporary ecological genetics, and a second on a specific research topic. The ten chapters of Ecological Genetics are based on those presentations.

A Noteworthy Record And The Breeding Distribution Of The Blue Grosbeak In North Dakota, Lawrence D. Igl

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

The northern limit of the blue grosbeak's (Guiraca caerulea) breeding distribution occurs in southern North Dakota. Records of the blue grosbeak in North Dakota are uncommon. Here, I report my observation of a blue grosbeak at a site where the species was recorded 25 years earlier. A summary of the species' distribution and records in North Dakota are provided.

Dramatic Increase Of Le Conte's Sparrow In Conservation Reserve Program Fields In The Northern Great Plains, Lawrence D. Igl, Douglas H. Johnson

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

During a continuing investigation in the northern Great Plains, we documented substantial increases of the Le Conte's Sparrow (Ammodramus Leconteii) in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) fields in 1994 compared with 1990-93. The most dramatic increases occurred in Eddy County, North Dakota, and Sheridan County, Montana. The changes in habitat associated with the drought from 1989 to early 1993 and above-normal precipitation from mid-1993 through mid-1994 likely produced favorable breeding conditions for this species in CRP fields in 1994.

Statistical Sirens: The Allure Of Nonparametrics, Douglas H. Johnson

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

Although nonparametric statistical methods have a role to play in the analysis of data, often their virtues are overstated and their deficiencies overlooked. A recent Special Feature in Ecology advocated nonparametric methods because of an erroneously stated advantage that they require no assumptions regarding the distribution underlying the observations. The present paper points out some often-ignored features of nonparametric tests comparing two means, and advocates parameter estimation as a preferred alternative to hypothesis testing in many situations.

Using Known Populations Of Pronghorn To Evaluate Sampling Plans And Estimators, Kathy M. Kraft, Douglas H. Johnson, Jack M. Samuelson, Stephen H. Allen

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

Although sampling plans and estimators of abundance have good theoretical properties, their performance in real situations is rarely assessed because true population sizes are unknown. We evaluated widely used sampling plans and estimators of population size on 3 known clustered distributions of pronghorn (Antilocapra americana). Our criteria were accuracy of the estimate, coverage of 95% confidence intervals, and cost. Sampling plans were combinations of sampling intensities (16, 33, and 50%), sample selection (simple random sampling without replacement, systematic sampling, and probability proportional to size sampling with replacement), and stratification. We paired sampling plans with suitable estimators (simple, ratio, …

Modified Transmitter Attachment Method For Adult Ducks, Pamela J. Pietz, David A. Brandt, Gary L. Krapu, Deborah A. Buhl

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

The value of radio telemetry for waterfowl research depends on the availability of suitable methods of attaching transmitters. In previous studies, external transmitters attached to adult Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) with sutures and glue did not stay on birds reliably. In an attempt to improve transmitter retention, a method of attachment was tested in which 4-g transmitters were attached mid-dorsally with sutures and with a stainless steel anchor-shaped wire inserted subcutaneously (anchor transmitters). Field tests indicated that all of 26 female Mallards and 63 of 65 female Gadwalls (Anas strepera) retained their anchor transmitters during 4369 bird-days …

Effects Of Climate On Numbers Of Northern Prairie Wetlands, Diane Larson

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

The amount of water held in individual wetland basins depends not only on local climate patterns but also on groundwater flow regime, soil permeability, and basin size. Most wetland basins in the northern prairies hold water in some years and are dry in others. To assess the potential effect of climate change on the number of wetland basins holding water in a given year, one must first determine how much of the variability in number of wet basins is accounted for by climatic variables. I used multiple linear regression to examine the relationship between climate variables and percentage of wet …