International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of The Czechs In Oklahoma By Karel D. Bicha, Bruce M. Garver

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This booklet, one of ten in the Newcomers in a New Land series, not only addresses a popular audience but offers scholars some new information and a thoughtful examination of many aspects of the Czech-American experience in Oklahoma. Recognizing the typical American reader's unfamiliarity with the history of Czechs in Europe and the United States, Karel Bicha of Marquette University devotes the first two of his nine chapters to a survey of that history. The third chapter, organized chronologically, tells how several thousand Czechs settled in Oklahoma from 1889 to 1910. Each of the next four chapters is organized topically …

Review Of Community On The American Frontier By Robert V. Hine, Robert Dykstra

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This appears to be a very "personal" book. Robert V. Hine's motive in writing it evidently stemmed not from any historiographical issuea gap in the literature, for example-but simply out of a fascination with the commune movement of the 1960s and 1970s. What was there of the true communal impulse, he asked himself, in the westward movement? His answer: not much. This apparently will surprise today's "commune people," who look to the American pioneer experience for community models. One suspects that it will surprise few historians.

But I could be wrong, and for those who find the question of interest, …

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

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book is a valuable contribution to the history of the working cowboy and the ranches that brought him into being. The twentieth century has furnished a wealth of books, both historical and fictional, delineating the cowboy and his way of life. Most have dealt with the old-time cowboy who followed cattle up the long trails from Texas and carved out his livelihood on the open ranges of the West. Few have been written on the modern cowboy, living within fences and under vastly changed conditions.

John Erickson has provided this modern version. An excellent writer, Erickson has spiced his …

Review Of The Jews In Oklahoma By Henry J. Tobias, Moses Rischin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book is one of ten brief volumes published in the Newcomers to a New Land series. These carefully researched volumes analyze and detail the histories of ethnic groups in a state that has not been notably associated with traditions of ethnic pluralism. In Oklahoma, where even the Indians have been immigrants, Blacks, Czechs, Germans, Indians, Italians, Jews, Mexicans, Poles, and Germans from Russia are each allotted separate treatment, while the British and Irish are joined together in a single volume

. In five succinct chapters, Henry J. Tobias of the University of Oklahoma outlines the story of Jewish immigration …

Review Of The Germans From Russia In Oklahoma By Douglas Hale, Norman Saul

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This small, compact volume is one of the Newcomers to a New Land series, which describes the roles of the major ethnic groups in the settlement and development of Oklahoma. The contribution of the Germans from Russia Mennonites of Dutch and Swiss ancestry from the Ukraine and Protestant and Catholic Volga Germans-to the social and economic life of the Great Plains is now better known, thanks to the activities of many local historical societies, the publications and collections of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia based in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the efforts of veteran scholars such as Karl …

Beyond The Borderlands: Mexican Labor In The Central Plains, 1900-1930, Michael M. Smith

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The northern and central plains states, lying well beyond the Spanish borderlands and containing no great urban metropolises, have received scant attention in published studies of Mexican migration to and Mexican labor in the United States. Although this region did not attract Mexican immigrants in large numbers, compared to California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado and such cities as Chicago or Detroit, there was a dramatic increase in the number of Mexican immigrants to the plains states between 1900 and 1930. These persons filled a vital, yet generally ignored, role in the economic life of the region.¹

This …

Review Of Law For The Elephant By John Phillip Reid, Stephanie E. Kalish

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Most Americans in the mid-nineteenth century lived within a society of laws. There are at least two opposed views with respect to what American attitudes and actions were like outside of such a lawful society. On the one hand, some historians have speculated that frontier life was lawless and violent. Might entailed right, according to this view. On the other hand, others have suggested that frontier life was natural and good. Americans, freed of the restraints of law, intuitively acted justly.

John Phillip Reid here examines countless diaries and letters of American emigrants on the Overland Trail at mid-century. In …

Review Of The Germans In Oklahoma By Richard C. Rohrs, Lavern Rippley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This small but competent book correctly concludes that the German experience in Oklahoma was extremely limited, primarily because the settlement of Germans there was sparse. In addition, the Germans, like most white settlers in the state, arrived only after periods of time spent in other states, notably in the Midwestern states of Nebraska, Wisconson, Iowa, and Illinois. In Oklahoma the Germans were concentrated near the center of the state in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and Blaine counties.

One in a series of small books treating the newcomer ethnic groups to Oklahoma, this volume contains a bibliographical essay and footnotes for each of …

Review Of The Mexicans In Oklahoma By Michael M. Smith, Ralph H. Vigil

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Because so little is known about the Mexican-American population living outside the Spanish-Mexican borderlands, this short introductory survey of the Mexican experience in Oklahoma adds to our knowledge of one state's "invisible minority." The book comprises nine chapters, a bibliographical essay, and four pages of notes. An index is lacking, but the ten photos illustrating the text add to the attractiveness of the work. Sources used by the author include secondary works, interviews, census reports and other U.S. government publications, newspaper articles, and three theses.

The first chapter is a readable and interesting summary of the distant relationship between Oklahoma …

Title And Contents- Summer 1981

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Great Plains Quarterly

Summer 1981 Vol. I No.3

CONTENTS

FRIENDS AND ALLIES: THE TONKAWA INDIANS AND THE ANGLO-AMERICANS, 1823-1884 Thomas W. Dunlay

IMMIGRANT VOTERS AND THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE IN NEBRASKA, 1917-1920 Burton W. Folsom, Jr.

AGRICULTURAL PIONEERING IN DAKOTA: A CASE STUDY Gilbert C. Fite

LAWRENCE GOODWYN AND NEBRASKA POPULISM: A REVIEW ESSAY Robert W. Cherny

BOOK REVIEWS

Comparative Frontiers: A Proposal for Studying the American West

The Great Plains: Environment and Culture

The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes

William H. Ashley: Enterprise and Politics in the Trans-Mississippi West

Law for the Elephant

The British and Irish in oklahoma The …

Review Of The Italians In Oklahoma By Kenny L. Brown, George E. Pozzetta

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This volume is part of a Newcomers to a New Land series design led to analyze the major ethnic groups of Oklahoma. Kenny L. Brown has studied the experience of Italians in the state and provides many interesting details on this little known topic.

Though few in number, Italians concentrated heavily in the coal mining districts of Oklahoma and contributed importantly to the communities in which they lived. As miners, they moved early into the labor unions of the coal fields and participated fully in the recurrent strikes that characterized this region in the period 1890-1925. Like their counterparts elsewhere, …

Immigrant Voters And The Nonpartisan League In Nebraska, 1917-1920, Burton W. Folsom Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Many people have wondered why socialism never came to America. Some think that life in the factories and on the farms was often so poor that Americans should have been ripe for a socialist government. Political historians have recently shown that radical movements in America had two insurmountable hurdles: strong ethnic loyalties and religious ties. During America's age of capitalist expansion, cultural divisions prevailed when waves of immigrants poured into urban factories and onto Midwestern farms. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, immigrants and natives fought intense local battles over prohibition, woman suffrage, and compulsory school laws. The economic …

Friends And Allies: The Tonkawa Indians And The Anglo-Americans, 1823-1884, Thomas W. Dunlay

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Historical models of Indian-white contact on the frontier emphasize conflict and hostility, yet historians are not unaware that whites and Indians interacted in many different ways in different regions and time periods. Even in cases of Indian-white conflict, it was not at all uncommon to find Indians fighting beside the whites against other Indians, often greatly enhancing the capabilities of the white forces. Some tribes were notable for their long-standing alliance with whites against other Indian tribes; examples include the Catawbas of South Carolina, the Pawnees of Nebraska, the Wyoming Shoshonis led by Chief Washakie, and the Crows of Montana. …

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 …

The Platte River Ecology Study: Special Research Report', Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

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

Each spring about 80%of the sandhill cranes in North America stop for several weeks in the Platte and North Platte River Valleys of Nebraska while en route to breeding grounds in Canada, Alaska, and the Soviet Union. This concentration of cranes is unparalleled in North America and these sites represent the principal spring staging areas for the midcontinent population. Large numbers of waterfowl, numerous bald eagles, whooping cranes, and many other species also use the area.

Recent changes in habitat conditions along the Platte and North Platte Rivers have prompted concern for the welfare of sandhill cranes and other migratory …

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 …