Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Book Review: Hard Road West: History And Geology Along The Gold Rush Trail By Keith Heyer Meldahl., Harmon D. Maher Jr.

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The dust jacket of Hard Road West promises familiar pleasures to John McPhee lovers, and so I picked the book up with great anticipation. McPhee’s works have greatly heightened the interest of writers and readers in the genre of creative nonfiction, and while for me, Keith Meldahl’s work does not quite reach McPhee’s stratospheric heights, for the right audience it is definitely a very good read.

The book is organized from east to west, forward in time, following in detail the wagon trail journey to the California gold fields. That human migration, driven by the search for geologic riches, provides …

Book Review: The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis Text By Rebecca L. Grambo, Bram Noble

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The Great Sand Hills region of southwestern Saskatchewan is among the largest and, unfortunately, last intact native prairie ecosystems in the Great Plains. The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis is thus a fitting title. Filled with spectacular photography alongside narrative text telling the story of the prairie’s past, present, and future, this 124-page book was a finalist for the 2007 Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award as well as in the nonfiction and scholarly writing categories.

Book Review: Rare Plants Of Texas By Jackie M. Poole, William R. Carr, Dana M. Price, And Jason R. Singhurst, Amy K. Buthod

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The botanical diversity of Texas has been well documented, so it is surprising that few books focusing on the state’s endangered and threatened plants have been published. According to the authors of Rare Plants of Texas, this is because “most of these plants are too rare to be mentioned, much less pictured, in standard guidebooks.” Their book, attempting to remedy this situation, succeeds with photos, drawings, and descriptions of 225 taxa considered rare within the state.

Expanding on Poole and Riskand’s Endangered, Threatened or Protected Native Plants of Texas (1987), the majority of Rare Plants of Texas’s 640 …

Archeological Interpretation Of The Frontier Battle At Mud Springs, Nebraska, Peter Bleed, Douglas D. Scott

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Between February 4 and 7, 1865, Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho warriors engaged a force of U.S. Army soldiers at Mud Springs, Nebraska. Historical records from both sides indicate that this fight marked an early phase of the Indian Wars. Based on systematic metal detections, firearms identification, and terrain analysis, this paper adds archeological insights into the arms and tactics used by the opposing sides. Well-armed Native fighters used terrain to approach U.S. troops, who maintained a defensive posture. U.S. soldiers appear to have dug a rifle pit to see approaching attackers.

Book Review: A Grammar Of Crow: Apsáalooke Aliláau By Randolph Graczyk, Rose Chesarek

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

On my desk is an old, unbound manuscript, a hand copy of a Crow grammar written by a Jesuit missionary in the late 1800s. Randolph Graczyk’s A Grammar of Crow: Apsáalooke Aliláau is the first extended grammar of my language since that time. That alone makes it an important contribution to American Indian linguistics and to the study of Crow. It is also a first-class effort. His work is based on a prize-winning dissertation at the University of Chicago, but has been revised and expanded into a general descriptive format to make it accessible to any language scholar interested in …

Book Review: Books On Trial: Red Scare In The Heartland By Shirley A. Weigand And Wayne A. Weigand, Ahmed A. White

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The subject of Shirley and Wayne Weigand’s Books on Trial is the prosecution of several Community Party members and their friends by authorities in Oklahoma City. The prosecutions, which began in 1940, entailed charges of “criminal syndicalism” based largely on the defendants’ connection to a Party-sponsored bookstore. Books on Trial recounts in detail the clumsy raids on the bookstore that set the prosecutions in motion; the rough treatment visited on the defendants by local authorities and citizens; the series of rigged trials resulting in the proprietor, his wife, and several others being convicted and sentenced to ten-year terms in prison …

Testing Multigenerational Colonization Of Carrion By Blow Flies In The Great Plains, Timothy E. Huntington, David O. Carter, Leon G. Higley

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The relationship between carrion and blow flies is well understood, but in situations where fresh carrion sources are unavailable, as may occur on the Great Plains, the potential for multigenerational colonization of a single carcass exists. By testing this possibility through a replicated choice/no-choice experiment using pig carcasses, we were able to demonstrate that multigenerational colonization of carrion by blow flies does not occur. Fresh pig carcasses were exposed to blow fly infestation, then placed in insect exclusion cages. After the emergence of this first generation of blow fly adults, "choice" cages were supplied with a fresh pig cadaver. No …

Review Of Scats And Tracks Of The Great Plains: A Field Guide To The Signs Of Seventy Wildlife Species. By James C. Halfpenny, Raymond S. Matlack

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Scats and Tracks of the Great Plains provides accounts of the scats, tracks, and other signs of 70 species, including 5 species of amphibians, 5 species of reptiles, 23 bird species, and 37 species of mammals. In some instances, accounts focus on a group of similar species. For example, all snakes are covered in one account. The author limited the book's geographic scope and number of species covered to keep the material manageable and for easy use in the field.

Review Of Native Americans And The Environment: Perspectives On The Ecological Indian. By Michael E. Harkin And David Rich Lewis, Paula Wagoner

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Native Americans and the Environment is arranged in five parts: "Shepard Krech and His Critics," with essays by Krech and others; "(Over)hunting Large Game"; "Representations of Indians and Animals"; "Traditional Ecological Knowledge"; and "Contemporary Resource Management Issues." Each essay provides useful information on American Indians and the environment, demonstrating the complexity that Krech alludes to in the first chapter in which he discusses the debate his book triggered and welcomes the wealth of discussion it has generated. He argues that the mask of the ecological Indian mystifies complexity, as does generalizing about "the" Indian anything. The rich essays that follow …

Review Of The Niobrara: A River Running Through Time. By Paul A. Johnsgard., Fritz L. Knopf

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Paul Johnsgard has authored an exemplary list of books as an ornithologist and natural historian. This volume approaches (may actually be) his 50th. The Niobrara reads as if one is on an auto tour with a premier naturalist who has a trunk full of documented species data. Residents from Harrison to Niobrara will find herein a welcome overview of their own unique natural history.

Review Of From Snake Oil To Medicine: Pioneering Public Health. By R. Alton Lee. Westport, Michael H. Fox

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In this meticulously documented chronicle of Samuel Crumbine's life, Professor R. Alton Lee provokes similarly unsettling images of a physically diminutive giant in the field of public health feted at the Waldorf-Astoria late in life against those of the young medical student from rural Ohio selling Piso's Consumptive Cure on the dusty streets of Dodge City, Kansas, to friends like lawman Bat Masterson. Among pioneers of public health such as Lemuel Shattuck or Jonas Salk, Crumbine is the pioneer in deed as in name, whose life's purpose took hold under the prairie skies of western Kansas.

Review Of Drought Adaptation In Cereals Edited By Jean-Marcel Ribaut, Patrick F. Byrne

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing plant biologists this century is developing crop varieties tolerant to drought stress. A warming climate, more extreme weather patterns, and competing demands for limited water supplies will likely combine to increase the frequency and severity of periods of drought, particularly in the Great Plains. Against that backdrop, this volume provides the valuable service of summarizing the state of the art of drought adaptation research involving the world's most important group of crops, the cereals. Editor Jean-Marcel Ribaut of the Generation Challenge Program has enlisted leading authorities on abiotic stress tolerance to author 17 chapters grouped …

Review Of Roots Of Change: Nebraska's New Agriculture. By Mary Ridder., James Peterson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Roots of Change provides compelling evidence of the opportunities this new agriculture offers and its effects on communities. Twenty-seven examples are cited outlining successful- and unsuccessful-cooperative ventures developed to add value to the agricultural economy thereby, helping farm families and the communities they live in. Where successful, farm families no longer compete with each other for declining land resources and are actually working together for the benefit of themselves and their communities.

Review Of The Grasslands Of The United States: An Environmental History. By James E. Sherow, Francis Moul

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Environmental history is a fairly new and complex method of study. It is, according to historian Richard White, the history of consequences of human actions on the environment, and the reciprocal consequences of an altered nature on human society. This interaction thus combines natural history with social, economic, and political history, along with many more subspecies of study.

James Sherow's environmental history of America's grasslands is quite welcome. Although grass covers much of the earth's surface (12 billion of29 billion acres), it may be the least studied or popularized of plants. The National Grasslands of the U.S. are among the …

Review Of Tied To The Great Packing Machine: The Midwest And Meatpacking. By Wilson J. Warren, R. Douglas Hurt

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Wilson J. Warren provides important answers to that complex question. In this study, he traces the transformation of the red meat industry across the Midwest from the terminal stockyards in Chicago, Kansas City, and Omaha to plants near small towns, particularly in the Great Plains, where cattle and hogs arrive via trucks rather than railroad cars. Warren emphasizes the packers' shift from buying through commission men at terminal markets to direct buying from farmers at plants located close to feed, water, and cheap labor. He also discusses the technical and marketing innovations that substantially changed the meatpacking industry, beginning about …

Annual Index

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

ANNUAL INDEX

Literature Review Of Mule Deer And White-Tailed Deer Movements In Western And Midwestern Landscapes, Scott E. Hygnstrom, Scott R. Groepper, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Chuck J. Frost, Justin R. Boner, Travis C. Kinsell, Gregory M. Clements

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The relationships among seasonal change, population dynamics, social pressures, landscape dynamics, anthropologic disturbances, and behavioral ecology are complex. Therefore, migration and seasonal movements are poorly understood and dispersal continues to be one of the least understood aspects of animal ecology in North America. We reviewed scientific literature on movements of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and white-tailed deer (O. virginianus) in western and midwestern landscapes to identify gaps in our knowledge and direct future research. We used electronic databases, library catalogs, Internet search engines, and peer-reviewed journals to conduct key word searches for pertinent articles. We found …

News And Notes

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

CONFERENCES

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Great Plains Research: A Journal Of Natural And Social Sciences, Volume 18, Number 2 (2008): Table Of Contents

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Social Sciences

Stated Preferences for Ecotourism Alternatives on Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation (Robert R. Hearne and Sheldon Tuscherer) ......... 131

Investigating Psychosocial Well-Being among Ethnically Diverse Rural Women: Expect the Unexpected (Rochelle L. Dalla, Catherine A. Huddleston-Casas, and Maria León) ........ 143

Moving to the Rural Great Plains: Point of Origin Differences in the Decision-Making Process (Randy Cantrell, Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel, Bruce Johnson, Charlotte Narjes, and Rebecca Vogt) ........ 155

Producer Responses to Carbon Sequestration Incentives in the Northern Great Plains (Dean A. Bangsund and F. Larry Leistritz) ........ 165

Natural Sciences

Six Centuries of Fire History at Devils Tower …

Book Review: Invasive Plants: A Guide To Identification, Impacts, And Control Of Common North American Species By Sylvan Ramsey Kaufman And Wallace Kaufman, Craig R. Allen, Aaron L. Alai, A. C. Kessler, T. Kinsell, A. L. Major, K. Nemec, B. J. Stephen

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The authors place the invasive species problem in context prior to providing species descriptions. The first three chapters offer background information on how invasive species become established, their impacts, and an overview of approaches to controlling problem species. The fourth chapter consists of a general key for identifying and locating unknown plant species. The majority of the field guide consists of profiles of individual species, including information on taxonomy, identifying characteristics, habitat, geographical range, ecological effects, introduction pathway, management strategies, and additional references. Most species are accompanied by at least two color photos, including a full view and a closeup, …

Book Review: Patriots, Politics, And The Oklahoma City Bombing By Stuart A. Wright, Lane Crothers

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Stuart A. Wright offers an interesting account of the rise of the Patriot movement in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Employing insights from social movement theory, he argues that Patriots-that group of Americans who regularly advocated and practiced armed resistance to government authorities in the 1980s and 1990s-emerged at the intersection of the Cold War, race politics of the 1960s, and the farm crisis and the rise of white supremacist groups in the 1980s. Thus, the horror of Timothy McVeigh's destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, was not the …

Book Review: Farming In A Changing Climate: Agricultural Adaptation In Canada Edited By Ellen Wall, Barry Smit, And Johanna Wandel, Debra Davidson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This timely collection will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and agriculturalists throughout North America and beyond. It offers both a comprehensive collection of recent research on the vulnerability of Canadian farming systems to climate change and a thorough and articulate presentation of the breadth of concepts and methods currently employed in climate change vulnerability assessments. The volume is information-dense in places, but necessarily so, given its broad thesis. Despite the breadth of content, the editors provide a balanced and coherent message, with individual chapters presenting varied but complementary contributions, organized in terms of three methodological approaches: impact based, context …

Book Review: Storm Warning: The Story Of A Killer Tornado By Nancy Mathis, Charles A. Doswell Iii

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

As a storm chaser and meteorologist myself, I admit my expectations for this book by an "outsider" were relatively low. For the most part, however, Mathis has gotten it right, evidently as a result of extensive research on her part.

The book alternates in a somewhat erratic fashion between tornado survivor anecdotes and narrative about the events of May 3, 1999, and the science behind those events. From a purely storytelling viewpoint, I find this alternation of topics somewhat distracting, though others might find it entertaining. "This book," the author says in her introduction, "is the life story of one …

Book Review: Frontiers In Colorado Paleoindian Archaeology: From The Dent Site To The Rocky Mountains Edited By Robert H. Brunswig And Bonnie L. Pitblado, Jason M. Labelle

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

For a little over 75 years, Colorado has played host to important discoveries regarding the peopling of the New World during the latest Pleistocene, with the earliest human occupations dating to at least l3,000 years before the present. Frontiers in Colorado Paleoindian Archaeology is a welcome addition to the already large body of research concerning this popular subject. The edited volume contains an introduction, ten chapters broken into three sections, an afterword, and a thorough index. Part 1 provides the context for the volume, including an environmental reconstruction of the Front Range (J.P. Doerner) and an overview of the history …

Book Review: Plains Village Archaeology: Bison-Hunting Farmers In The Central And Northern Plains Edited By Stanley A. Ahler And Marvin Kay, John Ludwickson

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

This volume, edited by Stanley A. Ahler and Marvin Kay, consists of19 contributions by 21 authors. It is not a synthetic overview of the Plains Villages, but an eclectic sampling of the breadth and depth of recent archaeological research and interpretations-case studies focus on topics including origins, warfare, trade and interaction, symbolism, settlement and social organization, subsistence and risk, and others. Such studies are daunting undertakings as the ruins of a single house, indeed the contents of a single refuse pit, may produce thousands of specimens to interpret. Plains village archaeological sites, fragile and vulnerable, have been destroyed by dam …

Book Review: Lewis And Clark: Weather And Climate Data From The Expedition Journals Edited By Vernon Preston, Susan Solomon

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The observations of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and the men of their company continue to fascinate readers two centuries after the first historic quest to explore the American West. This book edited by Vernon Preston expertly compiles all of the weather-, water-, and climate-related records into a single volume that will prove to be indispensable for those scholars seeking to understand the meteorologic and hydrologic records of that epic voyage. Preston is a highly experienced field meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Idaho, and his expertise is evident in the book's exceedingly thorough and systematic approach.

Book Review: Ladybugs Of Alberta: Finding The Spots And Connecting The Dots By John Acorn. Edmonton, R. W. Longair

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Only a few groups of insects, among all their immense diversity, have escaped the aversive response of most adults toward things with six legs and allowed nonbiologists to look on them with a more appreciative eye. With this publication, John Acorn has now given us a scientifically sound and entertaining view of three of the groups with this elevated status: butterflies, damselflies, and lady beetles. This new volume, like most of the animals it describes, is attractive as well as highly readable and informative.

Book Review: Policing The Wild North-West: A Sociological Study Of The Provincial Police In Alberta And Saskatchewan, 1905-32. By Zhiqiu Lin, Andrew R. Graybill

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In the end, however, many scholars will find Policing the Wild North-West to be of limited use. While Lin chronicles some important sociological trends on the prairies during the early period of full provincial status (and the extensive graphs, tables, and appendices are testament to his prodigious research), his book is so narrowly drawn that it does not serve adequately as a window onto larger questions concerning the Canadian nation or even the broader western region during the interwar period.

Review Of Folsom: New Archaeological Investigations Of A Classic Paleoindian Bison Kill. By David J. Meltzer., Steven R. Holen

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Well written and well researched, Folsom is appropriate for both avocational and professional audiences as well as for general readers with an interest in archaeology. I was especially drawn to the historical aspects of the research and the analysis of old museum collections. The figures and tables are appropriate, and the artifact illustrations in chapter 8 are of high quality. This excellent book should be in every major public library and in the personal library of everyone interested in Paleoindian studies, the early peopling of the Americas, and the history of archaeology. It is destined to become a classic.

Engineer Cantonment, Missouri Territory, 1819-1820: America's First Biodiversity Ineventory, Hugh H. Genoways, Brett C. Ratcliffe

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

It is our thesis that members of the Stephen Long Expedition of 1819-20 completed the first biodiversity inventory undertaken in the United States at their winter quarters, Engineer Cantonment, Missouri Territory, in the modern state of Nebraska. This accomplishment has been overlooked both by biologists and historians, but it should rank among the most significant accomplishments of the expedition. The results of this inventory allow us to evaluate the environmental, faunal, and floral changes along the Missouri River in the intervening nearly 190 years. The historical records form a visual image of a dynamic riverine system in which a highly …