Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Review Of Native Faces: Indian Cultures In American Art By Patricia Trenton And Patrick Houlihan, Patricia Trenton, Patrick Houlihan, Marsha V. Gallagher

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Native Faces is the catalogue to an exhibition of the same name presented at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles in 1984 and at Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum in 1985. The show featured late nineteenth and early twentieth century paintings of California, Southwest, and Plains Indian subjects by wellknown artists such as Joseph Sharp, Ernest Blumenschein and E. Irving Couse. The paintings were shown with related Indian artifacts and historic photographs. The catalogue focuses on sixteen of the paintings and their related material, with commentary on each by Patricia Trenton, an art historian, and Patrick Houlihan, an anthropologist.

Review Of The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given To John G. Neihardt, Edited By Raymond J. Demallie, Paul Olson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When John Neihardt finished Black Elk Speaks, he put on deposit in the University of Missouri library the rough English expansion of the shorthand from which he worked and the shorthand transcript of Ben Black Elk's translation of his father's life story. Raymond DeMallie has now edited this material to bring us as close as we are likely to get to what Black Elk actually did speak. DeMallie has done a first rate job. The outcome is a book useful for what it contributes to our understanding of Sioux iconography, Siouan perceptions of negotiations with the United States, Black …

Review Of A Buffalo Round-Up: A Selected Bibliography By George W. Arthur, Roy W. Meyer

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Compiling a bibliography of the buffalo might seem an impossible task, given the immense number of authors who have dealt with the subject. Certainly knowing what to leave out is as important as knowing what to put in. George W. Arthur has tried to set some limits to the scope of his "buffalo roundup" by excluding much (but not all) fiction and being highly selective about his inclusion of European sources. A large proportion of his titles comprise works of historical importance, either by nineteenth-century (and earlier) visitors to the North American Plains or by more recent historians. The fields …

Kansas Through The Eyes Of Kansans Preferences For Commonly Viewed Landscapes, Roxane Fridirci, Stephen E. White

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Kansas does not spring to most minds as possessing unique or picturesque landscapes. A study by the Ozark Regional Commission to help promote tourism in Kansas found that the state is generally perceived to be devoid of scenery and things to do. l Drab was a word used by several respondents. Some held outright negative images of Kansas; others had no image at all and no desire to visit the state.

Kansas inspires in outsiders a certain amount of respect for its mercurial weather, bumper grain harvests, and natural gas and oil deposits, but it has no spectacular mountains with …

Review Of Firearms Of The American West, 1803-1865 By Louis A. Garavaglia And Charles G. Worman, Warren W. Caldwell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The subject of this volume is not one with which most readers of the Great Plains Quarterly will be familiar, yet firearms were the basic tools of survival during the "conquest" of the plains frontier. Often they were also symbols of power. Over the years, a popular literature concerned with firearms in the West has grown. Higher quality firearms history has, with too few exceptions (the books of Hanson and Carl Russel, for instance) not been brought to bear directly upon the West. Many previous syntheses of western arms were the work of dedicated hobbyists lacking the training necessary for …

River Conservancy And Agricultural Development Of The North China Plain And Loess Highlands Strategies And Research, Huang Bingwei

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The North China Plain is the Chinese counterpart to the North American Great Plains. This largest plain in China suffers frequently from drought. Although agricultural production has been significantly increased in recent years, it is still far too low and too unstable to compensate for population growth and the demands of a rising standard of living. One of the major factors limiting agricultural development on the North China Plain is drought. A complication is that not only have surface and underground water resources been utilized almost to their limits for agrarian needs but also water shortages due to rapidly mounting …

Review Of A Tropical Plains Frontier: The Llanos Of Colombia 1531-1831 By Jane M. Rausch., Kristine L. Jones

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The strength of this monograph is evident in its solid documentation of three hundred years of Spanish and creole settlement in the tropical plains (llanos) frontier of Colombia, which extends east from the Andean cordillera into the greater llanos of Venezuela. Although speaking directly to a general historiographical and theoretical interest in the frontier, particularly in Latin America and specifically in Colombia, Jane Rausch also provides important background detail about rural history as it relates to political and economic development, especially for Latin America.' While limited to discussion of the Colombian llanos, Rausch's synthesis of parochial detail permits tantalizing comparative …

Notes & News

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

OTHER UPCOMING CONFERENCES

CALL FOR PAPERS

A PERSONAL NOTE

Review Of Edmund Morris: Frontier Artist By Jean S. Mcgill And Land Of Earth And Sky: Landscape Painting Of Western Canada By Ronald Rees, Richard W. Etulain

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In a brief, narrative biography of Edmund Morris, a Canadian artist of landscapes and Indians, Jean McGill describes the major events of his life and carrer. She is particularly factual in treating his educational experiences, his family and friends, and his varied, numerous paintings. Sometimes, however, these sections are little more than listings. Indeed, th~ unanalytical quality of this book is its major limitation. Often quoting the opinions of others, the author seems hesitant-almost unable-to put forth her critical reactions to Morris's life and works. Instead of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the paintings noted, she includes extensive commentaries …

The Dirty Thirties A Study In Agricultural Capitalism, Donald Worster

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"The history of any land begins with nature, and all histories must end with nature," J. Frank Dobie once wrote.' He was eloquently right, but until very recently such a view was not regarded seriously by academic historians, who commonly took nature for granted, beginning and ending their studies with an air of human omnipotence. That attitude, however, is becoming harder to maintain in innocence, as a group of ecologically informed historians challenge it. It is now more acceptable to say, with Dobie, that nature has played a stage-center role in the making of history the making of its setbacks …

Review Of The Papers Of Chief John Ross Edited By Gary E. Moulton, W. David Baird

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

John Ross was the foremost leader of the Cherokee people during the nineteenth century if not the whole of tribal history. Born in 1790 of mixed-blood parentage and educated largely by private tutors, he served as chief from 1828 until his death in 1866. Because most of those last century events-removal, factionalism, civil war-that dramatically 3haped the destiny of the Cherokees, as well as other Indian peoples, occurred during Ross's tenure as chief, to understand him and his role in those events is to have a better insight into a large slice of American history. The Papers of Chief John …

Review Of Sharing The 49th Parallel: A Handbook For Montana Officials, Robert W. Wright

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book presents an encyclopedic summary of the political, economic, geographic, and social structure of Canada, written to provide public officials in Montana with background information to use when Canadian issues become relevant to their decision processes. This review is written by a Canadian who is reasonably knowledgeable about his country but who knows nothing about the information gaps in the minds of Montana officials; it should be interpreted within this context.

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

INTERNATIONAL DROUGHT MITIGATION: AN INTRODUCTION (Donald A. Wilhite)

ABIDETH FOREVER? GLOBAL USE OF SEMIARID LANDS IN THE INTERWAR YEARS (]. M Powell)

ADAPTING THE ENVIRONMENT: RANCHING, IRRIGATION, AND DRY LAND FARMING IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA, 1880-1914 (A. A. den Otter)

RURAL SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN A SEMIARID AFRICAN COUNTRY: THE CASE OF BOTSWANA (Louise Fortmann)

ADAPTATIONS TO ADVERSITY: AGRICULTURE, CLIMATE AND THE GREAT PLAINS OF NORTH AMERICA (Norman J. Rosenberg)

RIVER CONSERVANCY AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTH CHINA PLAIN AND LOESS HIGHLANDS: STRATEGIES AND RESEARCH (Huang Bingwei)

DROUGHT MITIGATION IN AUSTRALIA: REDUCING THE LOSSES BUT NOT REMOVING THE HAZARD (R. L. …

Cultural And Economic Resilience Among The Kickapoo Indians Of The Southwest, Joseph B. Herring

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When white explorers encountered them in their Wisconsin homeland, the Kickapoo Indians lived in separate and widely scattered bands. I Although individuals referred to themselves as Kickapoos and identified with the major tribal group, over time the dispersed bands adopted additional cultural traits suitable to different regions and conditions. Environmental factors, proximity to white settlers, missionary pressure, and interaction with other tribes all produced a drift toward cultural pluralism.

Although noted for their conservatism, the Kickapoos were willing to adopt material culture traits that were to their advantage. This trend intensified after a portion of the tribe settled in Kansas …

A Review Of The Indian Frontier Of The American West By Robert M. Utley, Thomas Wm. Dunlay

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the past twenty years or so the Western American Indians and their conflicts with the white man have become the object of serious historical inquiry. The policies pursued by the United States government have received searching scrutiny, and the study of white men's attitudes toward Indians has become almost a field in itself. The literate public has become aware as never before of the consequences for the Indians of white frontier expansion. What has been needed for some time is a synthesis of the wide range of work being done in the field. Robert Utley is, of course, a …

The Dust Bowl Historical Image, Psychological Anchor, And Ecological Taboo, William E. Riebsame

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

T he Dust Bowl is an enduring image in the collective consciousness of Americans. Experience and intuition suggest that a few historical events and eras, and their symbols, endure as important cultural memories or benchmarks. The concept of collective cultural myths or symbols is difficult to define or even to examine. Nevertheless, there is compelling prima facie evidence that the American Dust Bowl is a powerful historical symbol; perhaps not one with the power of Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier, but certainly one that focuses attention whenever issues of Great Plains culture and agriculture arise.

In the light of the stringent …

Patterns Of Prejudice: A History Of Nativism In Alberta By Howard Palmer, Jorgen Dahlie

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

For almost two decades Howard Palmer has worked with impressive diligence to build a foundation of knowledge on ethnic relations in a province where, as he notes, "in a number of Alberta communities, the combinations of peoples are unique in the history of the world" (p. 6). Few readers of this monograph would disagree with that observation. Furthermore, many will discern that while the book purports to have a limited focus, the range and depth of Palmer's research quickly establish that this volume is no parochial examination of the subject of nativism. Whether he deals with the rise and subsidence …

The African Experience Drought And Famine In The Dry Zone, Randall Baker

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This paper concerns the changing climate in the semiarid regions of Africa and the technological response to it. Often the central issue in physical and social change in Africa seems to be interpreting a sketchy but rapidly evolving base of "evidence" and trying to decide the process that the evidence would suggest is at work. This is a far from easy task, requiring inspired guesswork as much as proof, but clearly it is absolutely central to formulating an appropriate policy response.

Notes & News

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

IN MEMORIAM (Henry Nash Smith)

CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

THE ETHNIC AMERICAN WOMAN (Edith Blicksilver)

HERBERT HOOVER FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS

ERRATA

The Big Rock Candy Mountain The Consequences Of A Delusory American Dream, Kenneth C. Mason

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Wallace Stegner's great, obsessive theme, evidenced in all of his novels, from the first, Remembering Laughter (1938), to the latest, Recapitulation (1979), is the hard, painful process by which solid, culture-engendering and -preserving values are achieved. The portrayal of intrafamilial conflicts and tensions, extending across generations, has been the means by which Stegner has most successfully demonstrated this process of acquiring civilization-building values. Stegner has left the depiction of the alienation and angst of the modern antihero to others. The family is what truly inspires him, stimulating him to give sensate fictional body to his ideas. Critics have recognized this …

Ritual Pageantry In The American West A Wyoming Case Study, Audrey C. Shalinsky

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Festivals that celebrate the founding of the town or a similar historical event of local or regional significance are common throughout the United States. In this paper I analyze the annual reenactment in Thermopolis, Wyoming, of the Shoshoni tribe's cession to the whites of control over several thermal springs, an event that led to the founding of the town. I show that the reenactment is an idealized interpretation of various historical events recorded and portrayed in poetic form by a group of townspeople with the limited participation of a few Shoshoni families from Wind River Reservation. I argue that the …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC RESILIENCE AMONG THE KICKAPOO INDIANS OF THE SOUTHWEST (Joseph B. Herring)

THE GREAT PLAINS TRANSITION AREA REVISITED: A REVIEW ESSAY (Howard W. Ottoson)

BOOK REVIEWS

NOTES & NEWS

INDEX

Review Of The Cpr West: The Iron Road And The Making Of A Nation Edited By Hugh A. Dempsey, Lillian F. Gates

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This volume is a collection of fifteen of the essays presented at a conference organized by the Glenbow Museum of Calgary, Alberta, where there is ample source material on the Canadian Pacific Railway. These essays give us something other than an account of the difficult work of exploring for and constructing the railway and of getting and maintaining financial and political support for it. They tell us how people were affected by the railway, how new communities were created, how the hopes of older ones were destroyed, how prairie agriculture and new industries like coal and oil were promoted, and …

The Great Plains Transition Area Revisited: A Review Essay, Howard W. Ottoson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

A review of Land and People in the Northern Plains Transition Area (Lincoln, 1966), by Howard W. Ottoson, Eleanor M. Birch, Philip Henderson, and A. H. Anderson.

I feel somewhat like Rip Van Winkle as he returned to his village from his nap. Twenty years have passed since Land and People in the Northern Plains Transition Area was published and thirty since the studies on which it was based were begun. I have not been napping, but I feel like a stranger to a geographical area to which I once committed much time working with others to understand some of …

Review Of Kansas Geology; An Introduction To Landscapes, Rocks, Minerals, And Fossils Edited By Rex Buchanan, David B. Loope

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This volume, intended for readers with little or no background in earth science, delivers not only an excellent summary of the geologic materials of Kansas, but provides many of the clues by which geologists have been able to unravel nearly a half-billion years of the state's prehistory. The first chapter, by Frank Wilson, explains the intimate relationship between bedrock and topography that is so beautifully displayed in Kansas landscapes. The ridges, hills, and cliffs of the southeast are developed on the oldest strata exposed in the state; the High Plains, occupying most of the western third of Kansas, are underlain …

Federal Land Reclamation In The Dust Bowl, R. Douglas Hurt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the spring of 1932, dust clouds swept over portions of the southern Great Plains. For the next six years, drought and the prevailing winds wreaked havoc over fifty million acres across northeastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, western Kansas, and the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma-an area known by 1935 as the Dust Bowl. Much of that acreage was submarginal-land that, given the price of wheat, did not merit cultivation-and it was easily windblown. Tillage with one-way disk plows pulverized the powder-dry soil, and the nearly constant winds blew and drifted it across crop and grasslands. During the remainder of …

Index

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Index 315-321 (6 pages)

Review Of ] Effason And Southwestern Exploration: The Freeman And Custis Accounts Of The Red River Expedition Of 1806 Ed. By Dan L. Flores, James P. Ronda

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Freeman-Custis expedition does have an important place in exploration history. Flores's presentation of the documents, including the previously unpublished Custis natural history catalogue, goes a long way toward filling out the Jeffersonian roster of explorers. But Flores has weakened his book by half proven hints of conspiracy, charges of congressional cover-up, and occasional sniping at other expeditions. The Freeman-Custis story does not require hype. Readers will be pleased to have the documents but may reject Flores's telling of what they mean.

Review Of Struggle And Hope: The Hungarian-Canadian Experience By N. F. Dreisziger With M. L. Kovacs, Paul Body, And Bennett Kovrig, Linda Dégh

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book appears in the government sponsored series A History of Canada's Peoples, aiming at the general public's interest in the ethnic dimension of Canadian society. "Most Canadians belong to an ethnic group, since to do so is simply to 'have a sense of identity rooted in a common origin ... whether this common origin is real or imaginary' ... all have traditions and values that they cherish and that now are part of the cultural riches that Canadians share." Despite the reference to such subjective concepts as "identity," "tradition," and "values," the authors of ethnic extraction were instructed to …

A Review Of A Final Promise: The Campaign To Assimilate The Indians By Frederick E. Hoxie, Brian W. Dippie

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Frederick Hoxie's argument in A Final Promise is that there were two distinct phases to the government's assimilation program between 1880 and 1920, divided roughly at 1900. The first was an idealistic, internally consistent policy of fully incorporating the Indians into the American way of life as small landowners with citizenship rights and the equivalent of a common school education equals among equals, in short. The second phase saw a diminution of expectations and a growing perception, consistent with the segregationist forces active throughout American society, of the Indians as a permanent, backward minority in need of continuing government controls. …