International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of Heck Thomas: Frontier Marshal By Glenn Shirley, David J. Bodenhamer

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book is a reprint of the 1962 edition by the same title. As such, it is subject to the same criticism that greeted its initial publication. The author does not provide citations, he invents dialogue, and he exaggerates Thomas's record and reputation. For a more detailed and reliable account of western lawmen, this reviewer advises readers to consult Frank Prassel, The Western Peace Officer (1972 ) or Larry Ball, The United States Marshals of New Mexico and Arizona Territories, 1846-1912 (1978).

Review Of Saving The Prairies: The Life Cycle Of The Founding School Of American Plant Ecology, 1895-1955 By Ronald C. Tobey, Royce E. Ballinger

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Saving the Prairies is an analysis of the growth, development, and decline of a major school of ecologists centered mostly at the University of Nebraska from the 1890s to the early 1950s. The title stems from Ronald Tobey's conclusion that the demise of the grassland ecologists resulted in part from their involvement in practical problems of range management during and following the devastation of the prairies by the great drought of the 1930s.

The book centers on the ideas, principally plant community succession, developed by Frederic Clements, colleagues such as Roscoe Pound, and a network of students whose research concerned …

Review Of The Frontier In History: North America And Southern Africa Compared Edited By Howard Lamar And Leonard Thompson., Leslie C. Duly

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Taking an attractive approach to a study heretofore reviewed in only superficial terms, Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson provide a fascinating and at times profound basis for comparing processes within the American and South African frontiers. Especially pertinent is their jointly authored introduction in which, after reviewing the literature, they provide a definition of a frontier as a zone of interpenetration between two previously distinct societies. Their definition is made usable in the subsequent four sets of paired essays, with each set focusing upon a broad historical process associated with the two frontiers.

In the first and best pair, Robert …

Title & Contents- Winter 1983

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

WINTER 1983 VOL. 3 NO.1

CONTENTS

INTERSECTIONS: STUDIES IN THE CANADIAN AND AMERICAN GREAT PLAINS Frances W. Kaye

DIPLOMATIC RACISM: CANADIAN GOVERNMENT AND BLACK MIGRATION FROM OKLAHOMA, 1905-1912 R. Bruce Shepard

SOCIAL SCIENTISTS AND FARM POVERTY ON THE NORTH AMERICAN PLAINS, 1933-1940 Harry C. McDean AMERICAN LITERARY IMAGES OF THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES, 1860-1910 James Doyle

COMPETITION FOR SETTLERS: THE CANADIAN VIEWPOINT James M. Richtik

BOOK REVIEWS

Town and City: Aspects of Western Canadian Urban Development

The Prairies and Plains: Prospects for the 80s

The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared

Ceremonies of the Pawnee, …

Social Scientists And Farm Poverty On The North American Plains, 1933-1940, Harry C. Mcdean

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Chronic farm poverty in the Great Plains during the Great Depression of the 1930s provoked sharply differing responses from the governments of the United States and Canada. Among the many features of American and Canadian life that helped shape those different responses, the most significant was the status of the social sciences in agriculture. In nearly every category one might employ to assess their comparative status, from funding to publication record to political influence, social scientists in the United States enjoyed an impressive advantage over those in Canada by 1930. A historical appraisal of one element in this disparity-the research …

Review Of Ceremonies Of The Pawnee. Part I, The Skiri. Part Ii, The South Bands By James R. Murie, Paul A. Olson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

After sixty years the Smithsonian Institution has finally published James R. Murie's work on Pawnee ceremonies in a handsome set of two volumes, impeccably edited by Douglas R. Parks. Murie, part Pawnee and somewhat trained in the techniques of anthropological investigation, began serious study of his own tribe in the 1890s and completed it in 1921 shortly before his death. Through much of his career he worked with white anthropologists such as Alice Fletcher, George Grinnell, Owen Dorsey, and Clark Wissler, some of whom gave him scant credit for his assistance in their research and publications. These volumes were begun …

Review Of Professors, Presidents, And Politicians By George Lynn Cross, James C. Olson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One of the major success stories of American higher education has been the development of a positive relationship between universities and the people who support them. That relationship protects the right of professors to teach and students to learn without undue political interference and at the same time provides for the exercise of a reasonable amount of public authority over the institutions. In Professors, Presidents, and Politicians, George Lynn Cross, who served as president of the University of Oklahoma from 1943 to 1968, traces the sometimes stormy relationship between state government and higher education in Oklahoma in a discussion …

Notes & News- Winter 1983

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

NOTES & NEWS

1983 GREAT PLAINS SYMPOSIUM: MAPPING THE AMERICAN PLAINS

JOSLYN MUSEUM OPENS CENTER FOR WESTERN STUDIES

AMERICAN INDIAN QUARTERLY

PLAINS AQUATIC RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Review Of Oklahoma Memories Edited By Anne Hodges Morgan And Rennard Strickland, Brad Agnew

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

There is something inherently suspicious about a work of nonfiction edited by two scholars that will not cure insomnia. When their book proves to be compelling, the reader assumes either that it has been ghostwritten or that the editors' credentials are specious. Since the pay of scholars would preclude their hiring a ghost and the academic credentials of Anne Hodges Morgan and Rennard Strickland are bona fide, the reader has little alternative but to accept Oklahoma Memories at face value and enjoy one of the most interesting books on Oklahoma published in recent years.

Anne Hodges Morgan, a Ph.D. in …

Review Of Town And City: Aspects Of Western Canadian Urban Development Edited By Alan F. J. Artibise, John C. Hudson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Western Canada's settlement is neatly divided at the Rocky Mountain front. West of there, the population is urban and the scattered clusters of people are separated from one another by miles of wilderness; on the prairies to the east there is a network of farms, small towns, and cities dominated, in turn, by a handful of metropolises. This valuable collection of papers by sixteen Canadian urban historians and geographers treats urbanization in both of these western Canadian realms, providing a balanced geographical coverage and giving the reader a consistent view of town formation, ranging from the smallest of places to …

Review Of Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan In Colorado By Robert Alan Goldberg, Robert Larson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Colorado has the dubious distinction of being second only to Indiana in the number of Klansmen who donned their hoods and engaged in a crusade to ensure that "100 Per Cent Americanism" would characterize the nation's society during the flamboyant twenties. Consequently, a study of the post-World War I Ku Klux Klan in Colorado is of particular importance if we are to gain a better understanding of this phase of the Invisible Empire's history, which "has been lost in the wakes of America's two more publicized Klan movements."

The Colorado Klan, according to Robert Goldberg, was not a product of …

Review Of The Life And Death Of Jerome Tiger: War To Peace, Death To Life By Peggy Tiger And Molly Babcock, Joseph Stuart

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Jerome Tiger, a Creek-Seminole painter of Muskogee, Oklahoma, produced what amounts to a visual history of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) during the 1960s. Under the guidance of Muskogee entrepreneur Nettie Wheeler, he rose to prominence in the highly circumscribed world of Native American painting. In 1967, when Tiger was twenty-six years old and on the eve of commercial success, he died from an accidental, self-inflicted gunshot on the parking lot of a Muskogee cafe.

His widow, Peggy, and cousin, Molly Babcock, pay him tribute in this lavishly illustrated book. A high-school dropout, Tiger served …

American Literary Images Of The Canadian Prairies, 1860-1910, James Doyle

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1879, the prolific dime novelist Edward L. Wheeler produced a narrative entitled Canada Chet, The Counterfeiter Chief, set in "a location as hitherto quite neglected by the pen of the novelist and veracious historian-i.e., in the British possessions to the North-west of Minnesota." If, as Wheeler suggests, American writers were indifferent to the Canadian West in the nineteenth century, this lack of attention can be related to a number of considerations, the most obvious of which is the fact that Americans were sufficiently occupied by the undeveloped regions within their own border. The westward experience in the United …

Competition For Settlers The Canadian Viewpoint, James M. Richtik

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Many aspects of Canada's relationship with the United States were summed up by Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau when he told an American audience in Washington, D.C., "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even tempered is the beast ... one is affected by every twitch and grunt." Canada has always lived next to this generally friendly elephant and Canadian policy makers have never been able to shake off the need to consider what has happened or may happen south of the border. Although the context was different …

Diplomatic Racism Canadian Government And Black Migration From Oklahoma, 1905-1912, R. Bruce Shepard

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

From the turn of the century until World War I, hundreds of thousands of American farmers migrated to western Canada. Not all of them were welcomed. Between 1905 and 1912, more than one thousand black men, women, and children joined the trek. They came mainly from Oklahoma, and they settled in Saskatchewan and Alberta. While their numbers were small in comparison to the total American migration, the appearance of these black settlers aroused bitter race prejudice among western Canadians, many of whom demanded that the Canadian government stop more blacks from coming. How the government went about this task is …

Avian Associations Of The Northern Great Plains Grasslands, Harold A. Kantrud, Russell L. Kologiski

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

The grassland region of the northern Great Plains was divided into six broad subregions by application of an avian indicator species analysis to data obtained from 582 sample plots censused during the breeding season. Common, ubiquitous species and rare species had little classificatory value and were eliminated from the data set used to derive the avian associations. Initial statistical division of the plots likely reflected structure of the dominant plant species used for nesting; later divisions probably were related to foraging or nesting cover requirements based on vegetation height or density, habitat heterogeneity, or possibly to the existence of mutually …

Book Review: Animal Population Dynamics, Douglas H. Johnson, James W. Grier

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

This booklet is one of a series offered by the publisher as an alternative to a single textbook in ecology. Each is intended to be a self-contained and concise summary of some topic in ecology. This one attempts to cover a major subject in a few small (13 x 22 cm) pages. It achieves but limited success.

Breeding Birds Of Wooded Draws In Western North Dakota, Craig A. Faanes

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

Wooded draws represent a unique vegetative community within the northern Great Plains. Because of their limited extent over broad areas of grasslands, wooded draws offer potentially diverse breeding areas for a large array of birds and mammals. Seabloom et al. (1978) reported that although wooded habitats made up only 8.6% of their area sampled in southwestern North Dakota, nearly 33% of the observed vertebrate fauna occupied wooded habitats.
Little information is available on vertebrate communities in wooded vegetation of western North Dakota. Hopkins (1980) studied the breeding avifaunas of several habitat types in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Hiemenz and Cassel …

Review Of Mister, You Got Yourself A Horse Edited By Roger L. Welsch, Howard W. Marshall

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This fine new book indicates a welcome direction regional scholars are taking in attending to cultural traditions in particular states. The Great Depression of the 1930s altered America and left behind some troublesome problems; but those hard times led to the serious collection of regional folklife by members of the Federal Writers' Project (an arm of the Works Progress Administration under FDR), and we are still discovering and wondering over the materials passed to us by those WP A writers and collectors. Roger Welsch's collection is the result of a modern scholar's discovery of a body of WPA materials in …

Review Of Buffalo Bill And The Wild West By Peter H. Hassrick, Richard Slotkin, Vine Deloria, Jr., Howard R. Lamar, William Judson, And Leslie A. Fiedler, William H. Goetzmann

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In many ways this is a most useful catalogue. It features six essays by distinguished scholars all intent upon reassessing Buffalo Bill's place in American cultural history. It also includes a cornucopia of splendid pictures, illustrating virtually every phase of Buffalo Bill's life. In addition it has a valuable chronology of events amounting to a short biography of Cody, a useful chronology of Buffalo Bill on film, and a significant bibliography. The main thrust of the essays in this volume is to resurrect Buffalo Bill and, as it were, to rescue the old scout from the damage done to him …

One Of Ours As American Naturalism, John J. Murphy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

I n a comment to Edmund Wilson, Ernest Hemingway ridiculed the war scenes in Willa Cather's One of Ours (1922) and implied the general inferiority of her effort: "Look at One of Ours," he wrote, complaining about the frivolity of the American reading public. "[Pulitzer] Prize, big sale, people taking it seriously. You were in the war weren't you? Wasn't that last scene in the lines wonderful? Do you know where it came from? The battle scene in Birth of a Nation. I identified episode after episode, Catherized. Poor woman she had to get her war experience somewhere." …

Review Of The Modem Cowboy By John R. Erickson, Nellie Snyder Yost

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

John R. Erickson researched The Modem Cowboy in a working laboratory that extended from horizon to horizon in his particular section of the Great Plains, the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. He writes from personal experience, gained in years of working as a cowboy on modern ranches. He makes plain the fact that the cowboy of today must master many skills unknown to the cowboy of the colorful open range before the era of tractors, vaccination, controlled breeding, and "calfpullers." The modern cowboy should be a mechanic and something of a veterinarian and horticulturist as well. Although he still rides horses …

Review Of Beef, Leather And Grass By Edmund Randolph, Michael P. Malone

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Edmund Randolph is a New Yorker and a Princeton graduate who came west in the 1920s and took up ranching in southeastern Montana. In Beef, Leather and Grass, he presents an autobiographical account of his partnership venture during the 1940s and early 1950s in a big-time ranching operation on the Antler spread, which lay on the Crow Reservation in the Little Big Hom Valley. The book, as the preface tells us, "deals with this situation in a unique manner, not as a fictional account of a ranch, a would-be 'Western' or an autobiography, but from personal observation. It is …

Marriage And Friendship In My Antonia, David Stouck

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Three events or circumstances in Willa Cather's life seem directly related to the writing of My Àntonia. In 1916, the year the novel was begun, Isabelle McClung married, and the great friendship of Cather's life was profoundly altered. Second, by 1916 Cather was in her forty-third year and had written five books; she was no longer enjoying youth and first success but entering middle age, with its attendant disillusionments and disaffections. Third, she spent much of that year at home in Red Cloud, Nebraska, where she visited many of the people and places of her childhood. I think these …

An Exploration Of Cather's Early Writing, Bernice Slote

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Willa Cather has been fairly well studied as a novelist of the Nebraska pioneer, a writer whose books have a lyric nostalgia for other times that were nicer than ours. This maybe an oversimplification. One might say, for example, that she wrote about Nebraska no more than she wrote about Rome; that it was not man's retreat that concerned her so much as man's extension into other planes, other powers; that she may belong not with Sinclair Lewis and Edith Wharton but with Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Thomas Mann. I suggest these possibilities after several years of fortunate exploration …

Title And Contents- Fall 1982

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

FALL 1982 VOL. 2 NO.4

CONTENTS

WILLA CATHER AND NEBRASKA: AN INTRODUCTION

THE USES OF BIOGRAPHY: THE CASE OF WILLA CATHER James Woodress

THE CHILDHOOD WORLDS OF WILLA CATHER Mildred R. Bennett

AN EXPLORATION OF CATHER'S EARLY WRITING Bernice Slote

o PIONEERS! THE PROBLEM OF STRUCTURE Bruce P. Baker II

MARRIAGE AND FRIENDSHIP IN MY ANTONIA David Stouck

ONE OF OURS AS AMERICAN NATURALISM JohnJ. Murphy

WILLA CATHER'S A LOST LADY: ART VERSUS THE CLOSING FRONTIER Susan J. Rosowski

BOOK REVIEWS

Historic Sites along the Oregon Trail

Army Letters from an Officer's Wife

Deadwood: The Golden Years …

Review Of Army Letters From An Officer's Wife By Frances M. A. Roe, Robert M. Utley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Reminiscences of army wives constitute a distinct genre of the literature of the American West. About a dozen-among them Mrs. Custer, Mrs. Carrington, Mrs. Lane, Mrs. Summerhayes, Mrs. Viele, and Mrs. Boyd-offer perceptive, literate, and often graphic firsthand commentary on frontier army life and the people and conditions of the nineteenth-century American West. Near the top of the list-indeed, at the very top, in the opinion of this reviewer-stands Frances M. A. Roe's Army Letters from an Officer's Wife.

In 1871 Frances Mack married Fayette W. Roe, an infantry lieutenant newly graduated from West Point. During the next two decades …

Review Of Deadwood: The Golden Years By Watson Parker, Gary D. Olson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Watson Parker has devoted most of his professional career to writing the history of the Black Hills of South Dakota, and those interested in that history are richer for it. In this, his latest effort, he has focused on Deadwood, the mining town of fame and fable, and examines what he calls its "golden years" of 1875 to 1920. Parker states in his preface that he has tried "to present Deadwood as a whole, a compound of people, business, technology, society, whoopee, and promotion, all intermixed and interacting to produce a small but prosperous city which to this day remains …

Willa Cather's A Lost Lady: Art Versus The Closing Frontier, Susan J. Rosowski

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When A Lost Lady appeared in 1923, readers immediately recognized Willa Cather's achiever ment. T. K. Whipple wrote, "with A Lost Lady, Miss Cather arrived at what can only be called perfection in her art'; Joseph Wood Krutch termed it "nearly perfect." Later readers continued the praise, calling it "perfectly modulated" and "a flawless classic" and generally judging it the finest of Cather's novels. While acknowledging its art, however, critics have stressed its themes in their interpretations, reading it as telling of the frontier's downfall, of the noble pioneer's passing, of materialism's onslaught, of woman's plight in a patriarchal …

Willa Cather And Nebraska: An Introduction, John J. Murphy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The essays in this issue were presented at the seminar "Willa Cather and Nebraska" held at Hastings College and Red Cloud, Nebraska, June 14-20, 1981. The week-long program involved one hundred registered participants from twenty-five states and Canada in a series of discussions, lectures, films, and performances on the topic of Willa Cather's Nebraska fiction. Both the attendance and the reactions to the program were highly encouraging and indicate that Cather is a writer with universal appeal. Although I did not attempt to direct the lecturers except to indicate the general topics to be treated, their essays are complementary in …