Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of In Search Of Canaan: Black Migration To Kansas, 1879-80 By Robert B. Athearn, Walter Weare

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Beginning in the spring of 1879 and continuing through most of 1880, thousands of former slaves (estimates range from six thousand to sixty thousand) fled the American South, determined to resettle on the "holy ground" of John Brown's Kansas. This dramatic "Exodus" captured the attention of journalists and politicians at the time, setting off a U.S. Senate investigation in 1880, and over the decades has held a mild fascination for historians. More recently, a number of scholars have caught the "Kansas Fever," most notably Robert Athearn in this volume and Nell Irvin Painter in her Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas …

Review Of Deserts On The March By Paul B. Sears, R. Douglas Hurt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1935, the worst Dust Bowl year, Paul B. Sears, then professor of botany at the University of Oklahoma, published Deserts on the March, a succinctly written book that directed public attention toward the growing menace of soil erosion in the United States. By 1980, Deserts on the March had become a classic ecological study; it is currently in the tenth printing and fourth edition. Sears, now retired from his position of chairman of the conservation program at Yale University, has rewritten much of the original text, but his message is the same today as it was nearly fifty …

The Heirs Of James C. Malin: A Grassland Historiography, Allan G. Bogue

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the early pages of his important novel of western life, Zury, The Meanest Man in Spring County, Joseph Kirkland brought the Prouder family to the blazed tree that marked the location of the Illinois land that was to be their new home, the "woods behind" and the "prairie before" them. Herbert Quick halted yOl1ng Jacobus Vandemark on the bluffs above Dubuque, where the first great rolling sweep of the prairie grassland lay spread before him, and reported that a great surge of emotion coursed through the boy. John Ise pictured the covered wagon of his parents, Rosie and Henry …

Review Of Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 By Julie Roy Jeffrey, Sandra L. Myres

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The exploration and settlement of the American West have long been subjects of interest to American historians and their readers, but until recently the frontier was viewed as a predominantly male experience. Frederick Jackson Turner's frontiers were explored, conquered, and settled by men, and Turner's successors kept to the male theme. The few women who were mentioned in western history texts and general studies could be counted on the fingers of one hand-Sacajawea, Narcissa Whitman, and Calamity Jane-with an occasional sprinkling of brave pioneer mothers and mining camp prostitutes with hearts of gold.

In the wake of the feminist movement, …

Review Of Landlord William Scully By Homer E. Socolofsky, Leslie Hewes

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The main concern of this book is with the American holdings of the Irish landowner, William Scully. The story continues virtually to the present time when the American estate of 225,000 acres at Scully's death in 1906 had shrunk but little to 175,000 acres in the hands of his heirs. The report is notable for the wealth of business details uncovered, from which the account is largely fashioned.

One may wonder how different things might have been if Scully's intention to become a resident farmer on his recently acquired land in Illinois in the early 1850s had been realized. Instead, …

Review Of The Fur Trade Of The American West, 1807- 1840: A Geographical Synthesis By David J. Wishart, Doyce B. Nunis Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The fur trade of the Trans-Missouri West has long been a fertile field of historical investigation, effectively plowed for almost a century by scholars, both trained and lay. Taking those familiar materials, Wishart has produced a book that brings a new and challenging dimension to that history. Indeed, his synthesis calls for a new interpretation, namely, that the fur men's rapacious exploitation of the fur resources of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains "was destructive to the physical environment and to the native inhabitants alike." The romantic image of the buckskin-clad mountain man at the cutting edge of the nation's …

Review Of The American West: New Perspectives, New Dimensions Edited By Jerome O. Steffen, James R. Shortridge

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One learns to be suspicious of essay collections. Not only does article quality usually vary, but often the issues addressed are so disparate that an editor can write of an encompassing theme only by using the vaguest of terms. Using these points as criteria, The American West is a better-than-average collection. Editor Jerome Steffen does not say how the eight essays were assembled, but, with one exception, the quality is very good and, with another exception, an important central theme is followed. Steffen asserts that western history needs new and enlarged perspectives if it is to escape its label of …

Review Of "Paper Talk": Charlie Russell's American West By Brian W. Dippie, Robert Spence

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

After much too long a wait, we have now a second volume of Charles M. Russell's inimitable "paper talk" -as he called his illustrated letters, verses, Christmas greetings, and similar personalia. The first was assembled by Frederic Renner in 1962 for the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, and has long been out of print.

Russell (1864-1926), the self-taught cowboy artist of the northern plains frontier, had a wide circle of friends and he was characteristically loyal to them. His correspondence is surprisingly extensive (despite his disclaimer that "writing ain't my strong holt"). Brian Dippie has performed a …

Review Of The Pirst Polish Americans: Silesian Settlements In Texas By T. Lindsay Baker, Maria Starczewska- Lambasa

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Though sporadic arrivals of Poles into the United States had started much earlier, it was onl y in 1854 that Polish immigration led to the establishment of the first self-contained Polish community and parish. It was perhaps a trick played by history that the first settlements of Silesian Poles sprang up in the San Antonio area of Texas rather than in an area such as Connecticut, which in many respects is geographically more like Poland. The large stream of Polish immigrants arriving in this country in the latter part of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth moved to …

Determination Of Age And Whelping Dates Of Live Red Fox Pups, Alan B. Sargeant, Stephen H. Allen, Douglas H. Johnson

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

Public concern for large carnivores, high longhair fur prices, and recent findings of predator-prey investigations have increased interest in the management of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes). A technique for assigning individuals to age-classes is necessary to understand the population dynamics and behavioral interactions of this species.

The Role Of Nutrient Reserves In Mallard Reproduction, Gary Krapu

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

Mallard (Arias platyrhynchos) populations breeding in temperate North America obtain a significant part of the energy and lipid requirements of reproduction at sites occupied prior to arrival on the breeding grounds. Protein for egg formation, however, is obtained principally from the diet during the nesting period. Both sexes arrive heavy and fat in North Dakota but experience substantial weight loss and lipid depletion during the nesting cycle. Weight loss is most pronounced among females and averages 25% from prelaying to late incubation. Body weights of both sexes are positively correlated with carcass lipid content. The paired male draws …

Review Of Western Movies Edited By William T. Pilkington And Don Graham, Michael T. Isenberg

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Western movies have been around so long and captured such wide audiences precisely because they reflect and comment upon some of the most enduring features of American culture. We have all grown up with the commonalities (and banalities) of the stock western: the noble hero, the comic or weakling sidekick, the schoolmarm, the villain. If these stereotypes were all there were to it, the western genre would long since have gone the route of, say, the novels of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth.

The value of westerns, like that of many other genres, is that they speak to present concerns as well …

Notes And News- Winter 1981

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Notes and News

The Center For Great Plains Studies

The Christlieb Collection Of Western Art

A New Edition Of Journals Of The Lewis And Clark Expedition

The 1981 Symposium: "American Pioneer Landscapes"

The 1982 Symposium: Call For Papers

Review Of Frederic Remington And The West: With The Eye Of The Mind By Ben Merchant Vorpahl, William H. Goetzmann

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book, by the editor of the Frederic Remington-Owen Wister letters, is a strangely disappointing work on a promising subject. It is not the usual picture book of Remington paintings, nor is it really a biography. Rather it is an attempt to recreate Remington's intellectual, emotional, and artistic perceptions as they changed through his life. This is a laudable attempt. Unfortunately, the author is most often cryptic, confused, and much given to the jargon of abstraction. As a consequence any reader must bring a good deal of information to the book or it will be virtually meaningless. Possibly a good …

Review Of The Ioway Indians By Martha Royce Blaine, David M. Gradwohl

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Martha Royce Blaine, director of the Indian Archives Division of the Oklahoma Historical Society, here traces the history and culture of the Ioway Indians from the end of the prehistoric period to contemporary times. Her book will be welcomed by both laypersons and scholars interested in the significant role of this Native American group in the history of the prairies and plains.

Blaine's comprehensive and sensitive perspective draws upon evidence from several disciplines and links the identities of living people with perceptions of the past as understood from the oral traditions handed down by Native Americans, the historic documents penned …

The John Evans 1796-97 Map Of The Missouri River, W. Raymond Wood

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One of the curious twists of Great Plains history is that the first accurate eyewitness map of the Missouri River in what is now North and South Dakota-the historic home of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Indians and of their nomadic neighbors-was produced by a Welshman who had come to the United States to seek evidence for something that never existed: the illusory "welsh Indians." The inquisitive welsh explorer, John Thomas Evans (1770-99), did not find what he came to discover, but he produced what was to be one of the most important maps available to Meriwether Lewis and William …

Title And Contents- Winter 1981

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Great Plains Quarterly

WINTER 1981 VOL. 1 NO.1

Contents

AN EDITORIAL NOTE Frederick C. Luebke

CHINOOK CLIMATES AND PLAINS PEOPLE Reid A. Bryson

TOWARD A HISTORY OF PLAINS ARCHEOLOGY Waldo R. Wedel

THE JOHN EVANS 1796-97 MAP OF THE MISSOURI RIVER W. Raymond Wood

TWO AUTHORS AND A HERO: NEIHARDT, SANDOZ, AND CRAZY HORSE Helen Stauffer

BOOK REVIEWS

The Ioway Indians

The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60

Women and Men on the Overland Trail

Frederic Remington and the West: With the Eye of the Mind

The Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the …

Two Authors And A Hero: Neihardt, Sandoz, And Crazy Horse, Helen Stauffer

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The western writers John G. Neihardt and Mari Sandoz had much in common, not the least of which was their admiration for Crazy Horse, the famous Oglala Sioux chief during the Indian wars of the last century, whom both considered the "last great Sioux." The chief was a fine tactician and warrior, fighting successfully against General Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud and General Custer at the Little Bighorn in 1876, but the authors found much more to admire in his personal life. Born on the Great Plains around 1841, he remained a "hostile savage" all his life; nevertheless, …

Chinook Climates And Plains Peoples, Reid A. Bryson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Changes in climate are major factors shaping the history of human occupance in the Great Plains region. Although Americans have often acted as though climates are fixed, the record indicates that in the past the climate of the Great Plains has changed drastically over relatively short periods of time. In order to acquire some understanding of what the Great Plains climate may become in the future and how human society may prepare for it, we must first comprehend what it was at various times in the past.

CHINOOK CLIMATES

An important element in the climate of the American West is …

Review Of The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants And The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60 By John D. Unruh, Jr., Robert G. Athearn

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In this somewhat less than precisely titled work John D. Unruh set out to synthesize an enormous amount of published and unpublished material concerning travel across the plains during a period of two decades. Readers will discover that to Unruh "the plains across" meant the central route to the West Coast. He refers only briefly to a southern passage (pp. 67 and 400) and to the Pike's Peak rush that admittedly brought forth miners, as opposed to emigrant settlers (p. 119). However, he does discuss the miners' rush to California in '49. It is estimated that one hundred thousand "Peakers" …

Rölvaag, Grove And Pioneering On The American And Canadian Plains, Dick Harrison

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Ole Rölvaag's Giants in the Earth and Frederick Philip Grove's Fruits of the Earth are not obvious choices with which to begin comparing the pioneer fiction of the American and Canadian plains. Giants, translated from the Norwegian, is about Helgelander fishermen settling in the wilds of Dakota Territory in 1873 and, with little more than their bare hands, trying to farm the alien prairie and establish rudimentary institutions of family, church, school, and local government. Fruits, written in English, is about an Anglo-Saxon farmer from Ontario who brings equipment and capital to the task of building an empire …

Review Of Women And Men On The Overland Trail By John Mack Faragher, Robert L. Munkres

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Instead of a general treatment of life on the road west, Women and Men on the Overland Trail by John Mack Faragher is an analysis of several rather specialized aspects of interpersonal relationships within the context of the westward movement. These relationships are then further examined in connection with rural Midwestern life generally during the time period under consideration. Among the topics considered in some detail are gender roles and the division of work both on the farm and on the trail, the significance of differences in men's and women's diaries, the frequency and costs of child-bearing and rearing, and …

Review Of Trees, Prairies, And People: A History Of Tree Planting In The Plains States By Wilmon H. Droze, Richard A. Overfield

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Whether trees will grow successfully on the Great Plains has been a perplexing question since the early days of settlement, and forestry and tree-planting attempts were numerous before President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed what in 1934 became the Prairie States Forestry Project, or more commonly the Shelterbelt Project. What was unique about the Roosevelt plan was its size, both in number of trees and in area involved. The project ultimately covered a zone about 100 miles wide by 1,150 miles long and stretched from North Dakota to Texas. Trees, Prairies, and People is a history of this New Deal program. …

Review Of The Dust Bowl By Paul Bonnifield & Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains In The 1930s By Donald Worster, Thomas Saarinen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s provides an excellent case study of American reactions to a major ecological crisis. By examining carefully how the nation and the region responded to this phenomenon, we could learn valuable lessons to aid in understanding current and future ecological crises. Thus it is of more than antiquarian interest to evaluate these two recent books on the Dust Bowl and the associated events now almost half a century behind us.

Although both authors examine the same area, events, and personalities, their treatment and conclusions are decidedly different. Both focus on the southern plains and devote …

An Editorial Note- Winter 1981, Frederick C. Luebke

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Center for Great Plains Studies has several purposes in publishing the Great Plains Quarterly. Its general purpose is to use this means to promote appreciation of the history and culture of the people of the Great Plains and to explore their contemporary social, economic, and political problems. The Center seeks further to stimulate research in the Great Plains region by providing a publishing outlet for scholars interested in the past, present, and future of the region. As an interdisciplinary agency, the Center aims to improve communication between scholars in the several fields interested in regional studies.

Regionalism has …

Toward A History Of Plains Archeology, Waldo R. Wedel

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

First viewed by white men in 1541, the North American Great Plains remained little known and largely misunderstood for nearly three centuries. The newcomers from Europe were impressed by the seemingly endless grasslands, the countless wild cattle, and the picturesque tent-dwelling native people who followed the herds, subsisting on the bison and dragging their possessions about on dogs. Neither these Indians nor the grasslands nor their fauna had any counterparts in the previous experience of the Spaniards. Later Euro-American expeditions, whether seeking gold, converts, or furs, added many details of much interest, but likewise found no wealth of minerals, too …

The Comparison Of Usage And Availability Measurements For Evaluating Resource Preference, Douglas H. Johnson

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

Modern ecological research often involves the comparison of the usage of habitat types or food items to the availability of those resources to the animal. Widely used methods of determining preference from measurements of usage and availability depend critically on the array of components that the researcher, often with a degree of arbitrariness, deems available to the animal. This paper proposes a new method, based on ranks of components by usage and by availability. A virtue of the rank procedure is that it provides comparable results whether a questionable component is included or excluded from consideration. Statistical tests of significance …

Variation In Pappogeomys Castanops (Geomyidae) On The Llano Estacado Of Texas And New Mexico, Robert C. Dowler, Hugh H. Genoways

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

Nongeographic and geographic variation in the yellow-cheeked pocket gopher, Pappogeomys castanops, were analyzed in specimens collected in northwestern Texas and eastern New Mexico. Univariate and multivariate methods of analysis were utilized to assess variation in morphometric characters among 12 samples of P. castanops. Because of significant variation with age, only adult specimens were used in analyses. Adult males were significantly larger than females in all 13 characters studied. Our analyses of geographic variation reveal that those specimens previously assigned to the subspecies P. c. simulans are not sufficiently distinct to warrant subspecific designation.

Estimating Nest Success: The Mayfield Method And An Alternative, Douglas H. Johnson

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

Mayfield's method for calculating the success of a group of nests is examined in detail. The standard error of his estimator is developed. Mayfield's assumption that destroyed nests are at risk until the midpoint of the interval between visits leads to bias if nests are visited infrequently. A remedy is suggested, the Mayfield-40% method. I also present a competing model, which recognizes that the actual destruction date of a failed nest is unknown. Estimated daily mortality rates and standard errors are developed under this model. A comparison of the original Mayfield method, the Mayfield-40% method, and the new method, which …

Age Determination Of Mallards, Gary L. Krapu, Douglas H. Johnson, Charles W. Dane

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

A technique for distinguishing adult from yearling wild mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), from late winter through the nesting season, was developed by applying discriminant analysis procedures to selected wing feather characters of 126 yearlings and 76 adults (2-year-olds) hand-reared from wild eggs during 1974, 1975, and 1977. Average values for feather characters generally increased as the birds advanced from yearlings to adults. Black-white surface area of greater secondary covert 2 was the single most reliable aging character identified during the study. The error rate was lowest in females (3%) when discriminant functions were used with measurements of primary 1 …