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Review Of Western Oklahoma: A Photographic Essay Photographs By Daisy Decazes, Introduction And Text By William S. Banowsky, John E. Carter

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Over the last several decades the photographic essay has gained more respect and understanding among serious students of culture. Western Oklahoma: A Photographic Essay falls abysmally short of the powerful potential of this medium. The work consists of seventy-five photographs by Daisy Decazes, a Sorbonnetrained photographer, and a brief introduction by William S. Banowsky, past president of the University of Oklahoma. The work begins with Banowsky's introduction, a simplistic time line of human evolution in Oklahoma, beginning with the Native American people's life and attempt to hold the land, followed by the onslaught of rugged pioneers, and culminating in the …

Review Of The Gate City: A History Of Omaha By Lawrence H. Larsen And Barbara J. Cottrell, Harl A. Dalstrom

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This work, the fourth volume in Pruett Publishing Company's Western Urban History Series, is a survey of the history of Omaha from its founding in 1853-1854 to 1980. It is the third general history of Omaha to be published since 1980 and is the first to give any relatively significant treatment to the city's history in the post-World War II era.

Larsen and Cottrell divide their narrative into ten chapters that cover five periods, each from twenty to thirty years. The narrative of fewer than three hundred pages, including a large number of photos, is synoptic and fast. paced, and …

Review Of Plains Families: Exploring Sociology Through Social History By Scott G. Mcnall And Sally Allen Mcnall, J. Allen Williams

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Scott and Sally McNall, of the University of Kansas, provide a new and interesting way to teach sociology. Plains Families uses the social history of the Great Plains region of the United States from the 1860s to the present to demonstrate how abstract sociological ideas and concepts are grounded in reality.

A variety of source materials (e.g., letters, diaries, interviews) are used by the authors to construct composite case histories of families. The presentation of each case is followed by a chapter designed to illustrate a major dimension of sociology. The illustration, in turn, affords the reader a much better …

Review Of Westering Women And The Frontier Experience, 1800-1915 By Sandra L. Myres, John Mack Faragher

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When Professor Myres began the research for this survey of women in the American West, many historians believed that there were few manuscript collections documenting the experiences of nineteenth-century women, "Such is not the case," Myres concludes. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800- 1915, the first volume of the Histories of the American Frontier Series devoted to the history of women, treats us to what the late Ray Allen Billington called "one of the most remarkable bibliographies to materials in this new area." Myres summarizes her extensive reading in these documents in topical chapters: western women's views of …

Review Of Men Of The Steel Rails: Workers On The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, 1869- 1900 By James H. Ducker, Robert H. Zieger

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Using an impressive array of company and union publications, newspapers, directories, and archival materials, James H. Ducker delineates the lives and experiences of the Santa Fe Railroad's labor force. Although he includes three chapters relating to unionism, strike action, and working-class politics, his main focus is on the more private side of his subjects' stories. Even in his chapter on the railroad unions, the author is as interested in the fraternal and social functions they served as in their collective bargaining character.

Ducker carefully places each of his topics in an appropriate historiographical context. When dealing with the strikes of …

Review Of Cowboy Life On The Texas Plains: The Photographs Of Ray Rector Edited By Margaret Rector, Charles S. Peterson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This slim volume is a happy combination of photographs from the Texas ranching country and a breezy but thoughtful essay about cowboys.

The introduction by John Graves dissociates itself from the specific time and place of the photos but maintains its Texas connection in its regional values and the color of its language. Graves gives broad consideration to economic change, technological development, the persistence of tradition and myth, and the impact of ecological change upon cowboy life. The cowboys he portrays came from rural places, participated in a legend they had already absorbed, and performed their jobs for fun and …

Mapping The Interior Plains Of Rupert's Land By The Hudson's Bay Company To 1870, Richard I. Ruggles

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

By royal charter, Charles II in 1670 granted to a small coterie of London entrepreneurs, united in a joint stock company, exclusive trading privileges in a vast territory of then unknown dimensions. The group was the "Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay," the Hudson's Bay Company. The territory was Rupert's Land, named for Prince Rupert, cousin of the monarch, who graciously consented to act as the first governor of the company. By charter, Rupert's Land included "all the Landes Countryes and Territoryes upon the Coastes and Confynes of the Seas" lying within Hudson Strait, that is, the …

Review Of Shadows Of The Indian: Stereotypes In American Culture By Raymond William Stedman, Paul H. Hutton

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Raymond William Stedman approaches the pervasive stereotyping of American Indians with the awe of the devotee of popular culture who was raised on stories of noble warriors and animalistic savages, but also with the outrage of a modern humanist who hopes to reveal and discredit demeaning images. This leads to an interesting dichotomy in the book as the author presents endless examples of insulting-but sometimes entertaining-Indian images from histories, novels, plays, films, and television. After more than two hundred pages of insulting, humorous, and sometimes wonderfully lascivious material, Stedman delivers a twentypage sermon on the evils of such material and …

Review Of The American Farmer And The New Deal By Theodore Saloutos, David E. Hamilton

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This posthumously published study by Theodore Saloutos is an important addition to the burgeoning number of works on New Deal farm programs. The subject is enormous. Saloutos focuses on the Agricultural Adjustment Administration's efforts to curtail production and to enact marketing agreements, the struggle to broaden farm relief to include both black and white farmers on the bottom half of the rural economic and social scale, the fight to bring electricity to rural America, Henry Wallace's quest to open up the clogged system of international trade, and the programs to rescue the farmers and ranchers of the Great Plains from …

Review Of The Matador Land And Cattle Company By W. M. Pearce, Richard A. Bartlett

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The question that immediately comes to mind is: what justified a second printing in hardcover of this book first published eighteen years ago? The book is certainly well written, though it is not of great literary excellence; it is also very well organized and researched, yet not brilliantly so. The real contribution is clearly its subject matter.

In 1882 a group of businessmen, most of them from in and around Dundee, Scotland, purchased for $1,250,000 what became the Matador Land and Cattle Company. At the time, many other British and Scottish investors were also plunging into the American cattle business. …

Review Of Red Harvest: The Communist Party And American Farmers By Lowell K. Dyson, Robert W. Cherny

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

By surveying Communist efforts to organize farmers and farm workers, Lowell K. Dyson has done for agriculture what Bert Cochran did for the CIO in Labor and Communism-presented a full account of Communist activities uncolored by Red-baiting or apologies. Dyson begins by noting the paradox in Communist efforts: "Communists sought to change the very nature of the American agricultural system, but the programs which won them the broadest hearing among farmers were aimed at preserving the system" (p. xi). Maintaining an even-handed objectivity, Dyson nonetheless conveys a sympathetic understanding of how some farmers came to espouse radicalism.

In the …

Review Of A Bibliographical Guide To The Study Of Western American Literature By Richard W. Etulain, Frances W. Kaye

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

As Richard Etulain states in his preface, this is a comprehensive but not exhaustive bibliography of books, dissertations, and articles about western American literature. The bulk of the volume lists materials on more than 350 major western authors, including some major historians and nonfiction writers, but perhaps the most significant part of the book is the section dealing with seven important aspects of the field that suggest ways of arranging research to go beyond individual works and authors to overviews and generalizations.

Etulain's categories are: (1) local color and regionalism, (2) popular western literaturedime novels and the Western, (3) western …

Review Of Montana's Righteous Hangmen: The Vigilantes In Action By Lew L. Callaway, William L. Lang

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The image of a hastily gathered posse comitatus riding out of a fearfully paralyzed western town to administer swift and violent justice to a band of desperadoes is as firmly etched in the American mind as nearly any popular western scene. In one violent portrait, the remoteness of the frontier from civilization, the failure of established institutions, and the necessity of good men to protect their families and property are capsulized. The fascination with vigilantes is bred of the excitement of its violent solution and the inherent mystery behind it all. What drove men to take the law under their …

Review Of Interwoven: A Pioneer Chronicle By Sallie Reynolds Matthews & Lambshead Before Interwoven: A Texas Range Chronicle, 1848-1878 By Frances Mayhugh Holden, Sandra L. Myres

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Written as a memoir for her grandchildren, Sallie Reynolds Matthews's Interwoven was first printed in 1936 and reissued in 1958 in a handsomely designed edition by Texas's famous printer and designer Carl Hertzog with illustrations by E. M. (Buck) Schiwetz. As the reputation of the Matthews book grew, copies became harder and harder to find, and both the 1936 and 1958 editions are now rare and expensive. Happily this 1982 volume is an exact duplication of the 1958 Hertzog edition.

Born in 1861 in Stephens County, Texas, Sallie Reynolds grew up on the edge of the Great Plains, a harsh, …

Review Of Texas Woollybacks: The Range Sheep And Goat Industry By Paul H. Carlson, B. Byron Price

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Paul Carlson presents readers with a comprehensive, well-organized, and easily read treatment of a subject comparatively neglected by historians of the American livestock industry. The first major synthesis of the Texas sheep and goat business in nearly forty years, Texas Woollybacks adds measurably in detail and focus to omnibus classics like Shepherd's Empire (1945) and America's Sheep Trails (1948), and to pioneering studies of the Texas business such as Winifred Kupper's The Golden Hoof (1945) and more recently Val W. Lehmann's Forgotten Legions (1969). The author, nevertheless, leans heavily on these and a variety of other supporting secondary sources. While …

Review Of Wichita: The Early Years, 1865-1880 By H. Craig Miner, John C. Schneider

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

City histories written in the late nineteenth century by amateurs were panegyrics to local men of property and standing. City "biography" was very much just that-a collective biography of the men who made the city what it was. As the discipline of urban history has matured, the view that tied each community's development to the unique personalities of its leaders has given way to an interest in the process of urbanization and the examination of cities as case studies, important primarily because of what they say about the larger urban experience.

Craig Miner's Wichita is a throwback to the …

Review Of Jewels Of The Plains: Wildflowers Of The Great Plains Grasslands And Hills By Claude A. Barr, Curtis M. Twedt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

After earning a degree from Drake University, author Claude Barr settled on a homestead just south of the Black Hills. In addition to his principal occupation as a rancher, Barr began to observe and propagate native plants in his small garden. One of his earliest ventures into writing about his avocation was an article in 1930 on the pasqueflower. He commented, "I was paid $20 for it, which seemed like a munificent price." This modest effort led to at least one hundred articles over the next fifty years.

Jewels of the Plains is not simply a compilation of plant characteristics …

Indian Maps Their Place In The History Of Plains Cartography, G. Malcolm Lewis

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

References to the maps and mapping activities of North American Indians have appeared in scholarly writings for approximately two hundred years and in contemporary accounts of discovery and exploration for more than four hundred years. The topic has received relatively little attention, however, from modern scholars. In view of the recent expansion of Indian studies in both Canada and the United States, this lack may at first seem surprising. In part it reflects the fact that there are relatively few extant examples of Indian maps because Indians and most whites have tended to treat them as ephemera, not for the …

Review Of Lakota Society By James R. Walker, Herbert T. Hoover

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This volume contains a hodgepodge of personal writings and field notes by a physician who served at Pine Ridge Agency soon after the establishment of a reservation for Oglalas in western South Dakota. Without formal preparation, James R. Walker recorded (between 1896 and 1914) what he perceived from observations and collected from informants. Guided by published materials on the same general subject, Raymond DeMallie has strung them together on a thin editorial thread. Together, the meagerly trained researcher from a previous era and an anthropologist who has served on the faculty of Indiana University in recent years have produced a …

Review Of American Farm Tools: From Hand-Power To Steam-Power By R. Douglas Hurt, Reynold M. Wik

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

R. Douglas Hurt deals with the invention and development of American farm implements and machinery with a special emphasis on the nineteenth century. The material is organized around the functions of various agricultural machines used in the major grain-growing states. Ten chapters focus on the improvements made in plows, grain drills, corn planters, cultivators, reapers, binders, headers, corn binders, corn shellers, threshing machines, combined harvesters, mowing machines, hay stackers, feed mills, and steam traction engines.

The author decided to describe certain lines of farm equipment without trying to catalogue all agricultural tools, implements, and machines. Therefore the reader will not …

Notes And News- Spring 1984

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Notes and News

CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

UPCOMING CONFERENCES

PUBLICATION POSSIBILITIES

Review Of Dammed Indians: The Pick-Sloan Plan And The Missouri River Sioux, 1944-1980 By Michael L. Lawson, Janet Mcdonnell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Under the Pick-Sloan plan the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed five mainstem dam projects that destroyed more than 550 square miles of tribal land in North Dakota and South Dakota. The projects wreaked havoc on five Sioux reservations: Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, Lower Brule, and Yankton, Dammed Indians: The Pick-Sloan Plan and the Missouri River Sioux, 1944-1980 chronicles the development and implementation of the plan and traces the events, personalities, and agencies involved.

The Pick-Sloan plan, formulated by Colonel Lewis A. Pick of the Army Corps of Engineers and William Glenn Sloan of the Bureau of Reclamation, …

Review Of With Good Intentions: Quaker Work Among The Pawnees, Otos, And Omahas In The 1870s By Clyde A. Milner Ii, Robert H. Keller Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Early in 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant began his "Quaker Policy" by inviting the Society of Friends to take responsibility for the administration of Indian affairs in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Indian Territory. The Friends, by appointing superintendents, hiring all reservation employees, and operating mission schools, would replace a corrupt patronage system and at the same time help tribes accommodate to a new way of life. The federal government, for its part, would supply goods, money, and official endorsement. Clyde A. Milner investigates the results of this experiment on three small reservations in Nebraska.

Over the past twenty years historians …

Closing The Circle The American Optimism Of Laura Ingalls Wilder, William Holtz

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

It was the summer of 1894. Their wagon had halted where the ferry would take them across the Missouri River, while across the parched landscape they had just traversed, "covered wagons stood one beyond another in a long, long line." The woman spoke to the child at her side, '" That's your last sight of Dakota.''' At twenty seven, she had turned her back on Dakota and a failed homestead to set out for a new life in the Missouri Ozarks, leaving behind her own family and her husband's, in every way all she had ever known of home. Her …

Title And Contents -Spring 1984

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

SPRING 1984 VOL. 4 NO.2

CONTENTS

CLOSING THE CIRCLE: THE AMERICAN OPTIMISM OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER William Holtz

INDIAN MAPS: THEIR PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF PLAINS CARTOGRAPHY G. Malcolm Lewis

CARL SCHURZ AND THE INDIANS Hans L. Trefousse

THE BEGINNINGS OF WHEELED TRANSPORT IN WESTERN CANADA Barry Kaye and John Alwin

BOOK REVIEWS

With Good Intentions: Quaker Work among the Pawnees, Otos, and Omahas in the 1870s

Lakota Society

Dammed Indians: The Pick-Sloan Plan and the Missouri River Sioux, 1944-1980

American Farm Tools: From Hand-Power to Steam-Power

NOTES & NEWS

The Beginnings Of Wheeled Transport In Western Canada, John Alwin, Barry Kaye

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Water transport has played a major part in the economic development of Canada. It has been claimed that a series of east-west water routes were essential to Canada's evolution as a transcontinental nation. The many connecting rivers and lakes formed the lines of least resistance through the environment, so that in most regions of Canada, water transport was almost invariably the earliest and most important form of transport. Land transport and land routes developed more slowly and thus played a secondary role in Canada's development prior to the beginning of large-scale agricultural settlement. However, there was one region, the prairie …

Carl Schurz And The Indians, Hans L. Trefousse

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Carl Schurz's importance as an immigrant leader and ethnic politician is well documented; his efforts on behalf of civil service reform and anti-imperialism have often been commented upon. His role as an administrator, however, is less familiar but by no means insignificant. Because it contributed to the more rational treatment of native Americans and the conservation of natural resources, it deserves to be explored more fully.

In March 1877, when President Rutherford B. Hayes sent to the Senate his nomination of Carl Schurz for secretary of the interior, party regulars were outraged. "In the selection of Mr. Schurz as one …

Ecological Distribution And Crude Density Of Breeding Birds On Prairie Wetlands, Harold A. Kantrud, Robert E. Stewart

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

Breeding populations of 28 species of wetland-dwelling birds other than waterfowl (Anatidae) were censused on 1,321 wetlands lying within the prairie pothole region of North Dakota. Ecological distribution and two crude measures of relative density were calculated for the 22 commonest species using eight wetland classes. Semipermanent wetlands supported nearly two-thirds of the population and were used by all 22 species, whereas seasonal wetlands contained about one-third of the population and were used by 20 species. Semipermanent, fen, and temporary wetlands contained highest bird densities on the basis of wetland area; on the basis of wetland unit, densities were highest …

Habitat Use By Migrant Sandhill Cranes In Nebraska, Gary Krapu, Douglas Facey, Erik Fritzell, Douglas Johnson

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

The principal spring staging areas of the midcontinent population of sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) are along the Platte and North Platte rivers in south-central Nebraska. Most of these lands are privately owned and managed for corn and cattle production. Diurnal habitat use by radio-tagged cranes was primarily in cropland (55%), native grassland (28%), and tame hayland (15%). Ninety-nine percent of the cropland use was in cornfields; 55% as grazed stubble, 36% as disced, cultivated, and plowed stubble, 7% as ungrazed stubble, and 1% unclassified. Grazed pastures accounted for 93% of the grassland locations and mowed alfalfa fields 77% …

Effects Of Weather On Habitat Selection And Behavior Of Mallards Wintering In Nebraska, Dennis Jorde, Gary Krapu, Richard Crawford, Miriam Hay

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

Sex and age ratios, habitat selection, spatial characteristics, and time budgets of Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) wintering on the Platte River in south central Nebraska were studied from mid-December to early April 197% 1980. The proportion of females and subadults in the population increased substantially from a cold to a mild winter. Radio-tagged Mallards shifted from riverine to canal roost sites during the coldest periods of the winter, seemingly because of more favorable microclimatic conditions there. Subadults ranged over larger areas during winter than did adults. Activity patterns varied with weather conditions, time of day, and habitat type. During …