Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of The Chouteaus; First Family Of The Fur Trade By Stan Hoig, B. Pierre Lebeau

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The importance of Saint Louis French merchants in the fur trade and the expansion of the American West during the first half of the nineteenth century is little known in spite of articles and monographs from the 1930s to the 1980s by historians such as John Francis McDermott, William E. Foley, and C. David Rice. A small number of articles by different authors have appeared in journals and anthologies. Shirley Christian published Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier in 2004, a work addressed to the general public.

Stan Hoig, …

Review Of Means Of Transit: A Slightly Embellished Memoir. By Teresa Miller, Joy Castro

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Means of Transit, the narrative is always on the move. For aspiring writer Teresa Miller, her hometown of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, was a trap to be escaped, and the Plains were the boring backdrop of restless road trips with her grandmother. Craving the excitement of New York, Miller managed to break free (in her fifties) only as far as Tulsa.

Miller is an endearing narrator, gamely revealing her own pratfalls, and, as a generous enthusiast of literature, she eventually published two novels and founded a book festival and television show in order to "reel in the horizon." But the narrative's …

Review Of Kiowa Humanity And The Invasion Of The State By Jacki Thompson Rand, Nathan Wilson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Focusing on the Southern Plains in the nineteenth century, Jacki Rand proposes a study on Kiowa responses to military invasion and the reservation system as a colonized people reacting against a colonizing agent. Additionally, Rand alludes to her investigation yielding new insight as Kiowa reactions to colonialism were in essence covert strategies of adaptation and maintaining traditional cultural values in the face of repeated onslaught. For some, however, this argument will fall somewhat short of these goals.

One of the difficulties in assessing the contribution of Rand's study is determining its projected audience. She begins her narrative with a jargoned …

Parallel Tracks, Same Terminus The Role Of Nineteenth, Century Newspapers And Railroads In The Settlement Of Nebraska, Charlyne Berens, Nancy Mitchell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Nebraskans of the early twenty-first century have had few encounters with railroads. Passenger trains are nearly extinct, and freights run over only a few main lines. But without the railroads that began to crisscross Nebraska in the 1860s, it may have taken years for significant settlement to reach throughout the territory that became a state in 1867. As history unfolded, Nebraska became a state more rapidly than expected. Against a backdrop of threats from competing railroads, extreme weather conditions, and remnants of Civil War politics, two key institutions led settlers into the new state: the railroads and the newspapers. The …

Review Of "William Clark: Indian Diplomat." By Jay H. Buckley., University Of California, Los Angeles And Autry Institute For The Study Of The American West Aron

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

For decades, radio commentator Paul Harvey broadcast a program called "The Rest of the Story." Six times a week, Harvey recounted stories that put a surprising twist on familiar episodes. Often the rest of the story involved constructing epilogues that followed the careers of well-known persons after they had left the spotlight. In some ways Jay Buckley's study of William Clark can be seen as a contribution to Harvey's series. Although the book includes chapters on Clark's earlier life and his cocaptaincy of the Corps of Discovery, threequarters of it involves what Clark did after he came back from that …

Review Of "Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria Jr. And His Influence On American Society." Edited By Steve Pavlik And Daniel R. Wildcat, Tink Tinker

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Here is a fine collection of eights essays on American Indian topics by friends and former students of Vine Deloria Jr. (Dakota/Lakota), the towering figure of our era among American Indian scholars and writers. While some contributions are more about Deloria's work than others, the whole collection is intended to demonstrate his influence on the thinking of scholars writing in American Indian studies today instead of merely placarding his prominence. Rather than simply praising Deloria, the volume continues his work. Anyone interested in the state of discourse in American Indian studies would benefit greatly from reading its contents. Most of …

Title And Contents- Fall 2009

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 29 / Number 4 / Fall 2009

"DAUGHTERS OF BRITISH BLOOD" OR "HORDES OF MEN OF ALIEN RACE"; THE HOMESTEADS-FOR-WOMEN CAMPAIGN IN WESTERN CANADA

PARALLEL TRACKS, SAME TERMINUS; THE ROLE OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY NEWSPAPERS AND RAILROADS IN THE SETTLEMENT OF NEBRASKA

"REJOICING IN THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE"; THE IMAGE OF THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE DURING THE FUR TRADE

BOOK REVIEWS

NOTES AND NEWS

Review Of "Charles M. Russell: A Catalogue Raisonne." Edited By B. Byron Price., Joan Carpenter Troccoli

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

No one painted the majestic mountains of Montana more splendidly than Charles M. Russell, but most of the action in his art, played out among the cowboys of the open range and the Native peoples of the Northern Plains, unfolds on the flat. Thanks to the comprehensive electronic catalogue of Russell's paintings, drawings, watercolors, models in mixed mediums, and illustrated letters available with this print publication, the reader can verify these assertions without tipping a single book off the library shelf.

Catalogues raisonnes have always stimulated the discovery of lost works and the reattribution and redating of others, and such …

Review Of "This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, And The New Deal." By Sarah T. Phillips, Brian C. Cannon

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In this sophisticated reinterpretation, Sarah T. Phillips traces the history and impact of New Deal conservation policy. She argues persuasively that rural conservation programs deserve a prominent place in New Deal historiography because they significantly shaped the New Deal state and because they were integral to the New Deal's campaign for economic recovery. Her work is sufficiently broad and innovative to invite criticism at multiple points on evidentiary grounds, but the book is consistently engaging.

Phillips shows that during the 1920s, eastern land use planners and politicians, along with progressives in the USDA, advocated planned and coordinated use of natural …

Review Of Seeding Civil War: Kansas In The National News, 1854-1858. By Craig Miner, Bruce R. Kahler

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Recently several historians have helped us better understand the central role that Kansas Territory (1854-61) played in polarizing the North and South. Gunja SenGupta has analyzed the complex motives involved in antislavery and pro-slavery immigration to Kansas. Thomas Goodrich emphasizes the bleeding in "Bleeding Kansas" by portraying the era's violent characters and episodes. The sesquicentennial commemoration of the territory witnessed books on the doctrine of popular sovereignty by Nicole Etcheson and on the U.S. Army's peacekeeping efforts by Tony Mullis. Two essay collections have allowed these and other scholars to elaborate on the myriad issues involved, one edited by Virgil …

Review Of Arc Of The Medicine Line: Mapping The World's Longest Undefended Border Across The Western Plains By Tony Rees, Molly P. Rozum

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

By 1872 Britain, the United States, and the Dominion of Canada had many reasons to map officially the international boundary along the 49th parallel, a line that Native Americans would come to associate with "medicine" for its power to halt the pursuit of law. Britain and the U.S. both desired to resolve lingering issues as Canada embraced independence. {The northern survey party was officially the British North American Boundary Commission.} While the U.S. Northern Boundary Commission advanced the Northern Pacific Railroad, Canada gathered information to plan and build a transcontinental railroad. With the line they drew astronomically, these surveyors, according …

Review Of Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists In The 1940s. By Scott Grant Barker And Jane Myers, Katie Robinson-Edwards

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This stunning catalogue investigates the adventurous accomplishments of a too-littleknown group that became known as the Fort Worth Circle. These artists shunned the typical Texas "bluebonnet school" styles of late impressionism and landscapes. Instead, they looked to European modernism for form-and inward for subject matter. The two essays-by cultural historian Scott Grant Barker and Jane Myers, Amon Carter Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings-are wonderfully paired. Barker offers a thoroughly researched account of the origins and exhibition history of these forward thinking artists, rich with anecdote and archival research. His expertise in the Circle is perhaps unparalleled. Myers delves into …

Review Of Medicine Bundle: Indian Sacred Performance And American Literature, 1824-1932, By Joshua David Bellin, Edward W. Huffstetler

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The central metaphor of Joshua David Bellin's study is an intriguing one, that the BOOK REVIEWS 157 interaction between "sacred performance by Indians and the performance of Indianness by Indians and whites alike" functions as a kind of cross-cultural repository, or Amedicine bundle," for the emerging America of the nineteenth century. His argument, in a nutshell, is that the co-opting of Indian sacred performance by the dominant white culture has shaped the evolution of both Indian and white notions of spirituality and cultural identity these performances help create. And while this is unquestionably true, the argument in the end seems …

Review Of Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, The Battle To Save The Buffalo, And The Birth Of The New West. By Michael Punke., Phillip Drennon Thomas

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Although the decline of the American bison is an often-told story, Michael Punke's meticulously researched work provides an engaging and careful delineation of George Bird Grinnell's singular role in marshaling the resources and support that led to the preservation and protection of the buffalo. -It's a story with many chapters, including the hunting and near extermination of the buffalo by hide hunters after the Civil War; the experiences of Grinnell in the lands beyond the Mississippi beginning in 1870 and his evolving interest in the region's wildlife and natural history; the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 and the …

Review Of "Picturing A Different West: Vision, Illustration, And The Tradition Of Cather And Austin," By Janis P. Stout, Thomas Austenfeld

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Janis Stout's credentials are impeccable: as the author of biographies {of Cather and Katherine Anne Porter} and of critical studies of American women novelists, and as denizen of the West and Southwest, she knows her topic. Starting from what she terms Willa Cather's and Mary Austin's "highly visual prose," Stout builds upon an argument about gender in the West made by Cather scholar Susan Rosowski in her 1999 book, Birthing a Nation. Stout posits that Austin and Cather encountered a West already pictorially determined by the monumental imagery of white, Anglo-Saxon, adventuresome, imperialist, violent, rugged, and most of all …