Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Notes And News- Summer 1998

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Notes and News

Big Bend Studies Conference

Research Fellowship In Southwest Studies

Half A Century Of Saskatchewan History

Rural Studies Meeting In Texas

Title And Contents- Summer 1998

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

SUMMER 1998 VOL. 18 NO.3

CONTENTS

FRAMING THE TOURIST GAZE: RAILWAY JOURNEYS ACROSS NEBRASKA, 1866-1906 Jean P. Retzinger

FEATURE FOLIO: IMAGES OF GREAT PLAINS TRAIN TRAVEL TRAINS THROUGH THE PLAINS: THE GREAT PLAINS LANDSCAPE OF VICTORIAN WOMEN TRAVELERS Karen Morin

FINANCING THE PALLISER TRIANGLE, 1908-1913 John Feldberg and Warren M. Elofson

BOOK REVIEWS

NEWS AND NOTES

Review Of Empire Builder In The Texas Panhandle: William Henry Bush By Paul H. Carlson, Ben E. Pingenot

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

William Henry Bush was a manufacturer, rancher, businessman, real estate developer, and philanthropist who rose to prominence and wealth during the last half of the nineteenth century. Born in the state of New York in 1849, Bush tried twice after turning thirteen to run away and join the Union Army as a drummer boy. His mother apprenticed him instead to a store owner in Lowville, New York, which marked the start of his career as a general merchant. At age twenty, he moved to Chicago to work for a wholesale clothing business, King Brothers and Company, at a salary of …

Review Of Native American Law And Colonialism, Before 1776 To 1903. Volume 1 Of Native Americans And The Law: Contemporary And Historical Perspectives On American Indian Rights, Freedoms, And Sovereignty Edited With Introductions By John R. Wunder, William T. Hagan

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This is a worthy project given the growth of activity in Indian law, most of it due to conflicts between states and tribes over gaming and treaty rights, issues proving to be a bonanza for the legal profession and likely to be with us for a long time.

The editor of this new series, John R. Wunder, is well fitted for the task, given his record of research and publication. Volume one's dozen essays, all previously in print, offer something for every reader. Particularly impressive are Joseph C. Burke's "the Cherokee Cases," Wunder's own "No More Treaties," and Sidney L. …

Review Of Native American Verbal Art: Texts And Contexts By William M. Clements, Linda Lizut Herstern

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Native American Verbal Art should be required reading for all teachers of American literature committed to teaching translations from the Native American oral tradition. William Clements's study stands as a companion to The Sixth Grandfather (1984), Raymond DeMallie's account of the textual creation of Black Elk Speaks. Using an historical approach, Clements reveals the problems of translating traditional oratory, including the translator's frequent ignorance of the Native language being translated. (While some translators have worked with a bilingual intermediary, many have simply re-rendered previous translations without reference to the Native language text.)

Clements examines in some depth the practices …

Review Of A New Significance: Re-Envisioning The History Of The American West Edited By Clyde A. Milner Ii, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Playing off the title of the famous essay by Frederick Jackson Turner, this volume of essays and commentaries is, for the most part, the outgrowth of a 1992 Utah State University conference planned as an opportunity for young scholars, as well as a few older ones, to offer new perspectives on the future directions of Western history a century after Turner delivered his influential words. For this collection of essays, several of them previously published in the Western Historical Quarterly, Clyde Milner provides the usual cogent introductory remarks and excellent editing skills we have come to expect of him. …

Review Of The Indian Bill Of Rights, 1968. Volume 3 Of Native Americans And The Law: Contemporary And Historical Perspectives On American Indian Rights, Freedoms, And Sovereignty Edited With Introductions By John R. Wunder, David E. Wilkins

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The extra-constitutional status of indigenous nations and their distinct political relationship with the United States government, no less than the equally distinctive nature of the relationship of individual Indians to their tribal governments and other sovereignties they are more problematically related to, the state and federal governments, is a most complicated subject. Individuals venturing into this intellectual and substantive thicket should be applauded for their academic bravery. The third of the six volume series edited by John R. Wunder sets out to explore that thicket.

Wunder claims the volume is "of particular significance," not only because of its subject matter, …

Review Of From Our Eyes: Learning From Indigenous Peoples Edited By Sylvia O'Meara And Douglas A. West, Pete Hudson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This collection of writings by aboriginal authors, all of whom are academics from a wide range of disciplines, is rescued from what could have been a succession of fragments, few of them of relevance to anyone reader, by each author's scholarly clarity. Moreover, the multiand interdisciplinary quality of the book, manifested within and between each contribution, reinforces a unifying theme: the holistic world view shared by the authors, one that continually seeks to break through boundaries, including those of particular disciplines.

The book's interest and value, however, are not contained in anyone theme. There are themes within themes here, difficult …

Review Of Leaning Into The Wind: Women Write From The Heart Of The West Edited By Edited By Linda Hasselstrom, Gaydell Collier, And Nancy Curtis., Tisha Gilreath-Mullen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Linda Hasselstrom (rancher and author of Windbreak, Going Over East, Land Circle, and Caught by One Wing), Gaydell Collier (rancher, director of the Crook County Public Library in Wyoming, and co-author of several books on horse training), and Nancy Curtis (rancher and owner-operator of the highly acclaimed High Plains Press) combined talents to edit Leaning into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West. Contributors-of which there are at least two hundred-to this anthology of western women's writings offer a counter-balance to High Plains stereotypes popularized by those historians and writers who erased women's existence from …

Framing The Tourist Gaze Railway Journeys Across Nebraska, 1866-1906, Jean P. Retzinger

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

As the last of the Conestoga wagons crossed the Nebraska plains along the worn and rutted Oregon Trail, the tracks of the Union Pacific were already being laid. Telegraph wires had crossed the continent by 1861; the railroad would follow within the decade. Touted as the latest technology to transform space and time, the railroad was to "bind all portions of our country in one homogeneous organism of political, military, social, commercial and Christian nationality and power."² Trains from the East transported consumer goods and consumers alike to the western territories, traversing in a single hour what once had …

Review Of Beyond Bounds: Cross-Cultural Essays On Anglo, American Indian, & Chicano Literature By Robert Franklin Gish, Ricardo L. Garcia

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Good writing transcends boundaries, says Robert Franklin Gish in this cross-cultural inquiry into Anglo, American Indian, and Chicano literature. Beyond Bounds grew out of Gish's willingness to risk "the disdain of advocating ... 'Buffalo Chip Lit'" to test the notion that "no one ethnicity, no one group ... offers the ultimate 'truth' of tourism, seen most metaphorically as the 'tourism' of mortality."

Part One, "Anglo Visitors," examines the early twentieth-century writings of Charles Lummis, Erna Ferguson, Harvey Ferguson, and Witter Bynner, visitors to New Mexico who were unabashed supporters of Anglo conquest. Yet they recognized they were newcomers to an …

Review Of The Culture Of Wilderness: Agriculture As Colonization In The American West By Frieda Knobloch, Emily Greenwald

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In this intriguing synthesis, Frieda Knobloch brings a new set of ideas to existing scholarship on agriculture and the environmental history of the American West. She traces the process of "nature becoming culture," the ways in which naturally existing resources (land, animals, plants, and trees) were transformed into agriculturally-managed commodities, thereby serving the twin imperatives of colonization and agriculture. Knobloch argues that colonization and agriculture not only sprang from the same roots in the English language, but have also operated hand-in-hand to dispossess indigenous plants, animals, and peoples. In Knobloch's formulation, neither can exist apart from the other-essentially, agriculture is …

Review Of The Caddos, The Wichitas, And The United States, 1846-1901 By F. Todd Smith, Elizabeth A.H. John

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

An introductory assertion that neither the Caddo nor the Wichita had to endure a particularly traumatic relocation experience will startle any reader who has an inkling of the history of those tribes. Ultimately, it must perplex anyone who perseveres through the ensuing chronicle of repeated dispossession and decimation under the aegis of the governments of Texas and the United States. The first chapter presents further dubious analysis, sometimes irrelevant to the sources cited, in a quixotic attempt to trace both tribes from the '1540s to 1846 in sixteen pages.

Happily, the author hits his stride in chapter two, thenceforth relying …

Review Of "And Prairie Dogs Weren't Kosher": Jewish Women In The Upper Midwest Since 1855 By Linda Mack Schloff, H. Elaine Lindgren

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Spanning the experiences of early immigrants to those of contemporary women, Linda Mack Schloff's concise yet comprehensive history of the contributions of Jewish women in the upper Midwest is an important addition to the region's ethnic literature. The author successfully integrates disparate information from several time periods, enabling the reader to follow a progression of adaptations and social changes. The resulting mosaic displays general trends but also depicts the ways in which individual women worked out distinct solutions to their circumstances. The study relies heavily on first-person accounts or "voices" of both women and men. Excellent photographs enhance and reinforce …

Review Of The True Spirit And Original Intent Of Treaty 7 By Treaty 7 Elders And Tribal Council With Walter Hildebrandt, Sarah Carter, And Dorothy First Rider, David Reed Miller

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The eleven numbered treaties between representatives of the Crown on behalf of the Dominion of Canada and First Nations resident within specific regions of central and western Canada were negotiated from 1850 to 1929. Treaty 7, negotiated 19 to 22 September 1877 at Blackfoot Crossing, included the Bloods, Peigans, and Siksika, three of the divisions of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Stoney (all southern Stoney except the Bighorn Band), and the Tsuu T'ina (Sarcee) and encompassed the region of southern Alberta.

This volume represents a synthesis of information gathered by the Treaty 7 Project, a special collaborative research endeavor of the …

Review Of Standing In The Light: A Lakota Way Of Seeing By Severt Young Bear And R. D. Theisz, Kelly J. Morgan

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Dance, song, and spiritual renewal are at the heart of traditional Lakota life in contemporary America. Severt Young Bear's life experiences, as told in this collaborative work resulting from Young Bear and R. D. Theisz's close relationship developed over three decades, are a continuation of Lakota autobiographical and biographical literature. Theisz's fluency in Lakota language, his broad knowledge of traditional and contemporary Lakota life, as well as his adoption by a Lakota family, lend to his credibility in co-authoring the text. His friendship with Young Bear centered on their common interests in music and dance, and each's particular talents led …

Review Of Legacy: New Perspectives On The Battle Of The Little Bighorn Edited By Charles E. Rankin, Gregory J. Urwin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

For more than twenty years, the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument has generated more controversy than any other unit administered by the National Park Service. Amateur historians belonging to the Little Big Horn Associates-angry because their overpriced, vanity press books were not sold in the park bookstore-had the staff investigated for alleged anti-Custer bias. At the same time, increasingly belligerent Native American activists protested that the site of their ancestors' greatest victory was being run as a shrine to the frontier military.

In 1988, Russell Means and other militants from the American Indian Movement stormed onto the battlefield and desecrated …

Feature Folio Images Of Great Plains Train Travel

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Images of Great Plains Train Travel (8 pages)

Financing The Palliser Triangle, 1908-1913, Warren M. Elofson, John Feldberg

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

A decade ago, David C. Jones compellingly described the immense ecological and human tragedy that occurred in the southern, semiarid districts of Alberta and Saskatchewan in the late 1910s and early 1920s.¹ Prior to World War I settlers poured into these provinces buoyed by dreams of a better life, but in the decade or so following 1915 many who had taken homesteads in the so-called Palliser Triangle saw their hopes shattered by successive years of drought and crop failure. One of the crucial vehicles in this tragedy was the financial institution. Between 1908 and 1913 investment firms made available …

Trains Through The Plains The Great Plains Landscape Of Victorian Women Travelers, Karen M. Morin

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The young British novelist Iza Hardy, during her travels to America in 1881-83, anticipated the American West as terra incagnitae, a place completely beyond civilization. Like many other British tourists to America in the late nineteenth century, Hardy traveled extensively throughout the East Coast and South, and took a transcontinental journey to the Pacific Coast by train (Fig. O. Out of her American travels Hardy produced Between Two Oceans: Or, Sketches of American Travel (1884) and a book about Florida. Hardy's coverage of the western portion of her American journey followed the transect the railroad did, with chapters of …

Distribution And Environmental Fate Of Pesticides In Prairie Wetlands, L. Gordon Goldsborough, William G. Crumpton

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

There is abundant, albeit fragmentary, evidence that prairie wetlands are being contaminated extensively by agricultural pesticides (primarily herbicides and insecticides) and other anthropogenic contaminants. Such inputs can affect fundamental ecosystem properties such as primary production which, in turn, affects habitat and resource supply for wetland fauna. We review data on the use of pesticides, off-site transport of residues from treated land, and the frequency with which these residues are subsequently detected in receiving streams and wetlands on the prairies. As the environmental distribution of a pesticide is affected by its chemical and physical properties, and the abiotic and biotic characteristics …

The Groundwater Recharge Function Of Small Wetlands In The Semi-Arid Northern Prairies, Garth Van Der Kamp, Masaki Hayashi

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

Small wetlands in the semi-arid northern prairie region are focal points for groundwater recharge. Hence the groundwater recharge function of the wetlands is an important consideration in development of wetland conservation policies. Most of the groundwater recharge from the wetlands flows to the moist margins of the wetlands and serves to maintain high evapotranspiration by the vegetation surrounding the wetlands. Only a small portion of the recharged water flows to regional aquifers, but this portion is important for sustaining groundwater resources. Wetland drainage eliminates the local flow systems, but may have little effects on regional aquifers other than a slight …

Great Plains Research, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 1998 - Contents

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

Table of contents

Decision-Making For Prairie Wetland Restorations, Susan M. Galatowitsch, Arnold G. Van Der Valk, Rachel Budelsky

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

Assessments of wetland restorations in the prairie region are not done routinely and no accepted assessment framework exists. Wetland assessment protocols in the U.s. have varied over time from those emphasizing social significance to those attempting to quantify functions of wetlands from hydrogeomorphic considerations. A conceptual framework for restoration decision-making is presented that is based on optimizing wetland restoration success at both the landscape and site scales. This framework uses societal concerns, knowledge of factors that limit ecosystem recovery, and data on losses of different types of wetlands locally and regionally to establish restoration goals and guide site selection. These …

Review Of Mountains And Plains: The Ecology Of Wyoming Landscapes By Dennis H. Knight, David M. Armstrong

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

Wyoming is a remarkable place, a showcase for ecological pattern and process; and this is an excellent book with an exceptional range of information, a book appropriate in vision to its magnificent subject. Dennis Knight has produced a wide-ranging general ecology, sure to be effective as a college-level textbook not only in Wyoming, but across the Great Plains, the Rockies, and even the Great Basin. Despite its title, it is not stubbornly or even preponderantly about landscape ecology. Read "landscape" in a panoramic, common sense way rather than as a technical term. The book treats ecology on many scales: bioregions, …

Review Of Hard Places: Reading The Landscape Of America's Historic Mining Districts By Richard V. Francaviglia, Duane A. Smith

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

In his introduction to Hard Places, Richard Francaviglia admits that "mining landscapes may not be especially pretty to look at." Beauty is in the beholder's eye, and many people would probably agree with the statement; others of us see in these hard places doorways to the past and a better understanding of the present. He goes on to say, "Across the country, mining has left its legacy on the landscape. Mining, in fact, creates its own distinctive topography that may last for thousands of years" (xvii).

Within those statements is the heart of this pioneering study, an analysis of …

Review Of North American Exploration: A Continent Defined Edited By John Logan Allen, Leslie Hewes

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

A Continent Defined is the second of three volumes on North American discovery edited by geographer John Logan Allen. For this volume, six contributors-three historians and three geographers, all North Americans were recruited.

The discoverers dealt with were, of course, late-comers who found long-term residents already there. Native Americans commonly supplied guides and sometimes maps, indispensable services. One wonders if a citation of G. Malcolm Lewis, of Sheffield, England, for his work on maps by aboriginals is not deserved.

Review Of Atlas Of The New West: Portrait Of A Changing Region Edited By William Riebsame With Maps By James Robb, Michael F. Logan

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

What do Dallas, Los Angeles, Omaha, and Seattle have in common? All are situated outside the New West, according to the creators of the Atlas of the New West. Should readers of Great Plains Research bother with this latest entry into the New Western genre? Yes. The book's effort to come to an understanding of a contemporary, identifiable region of the United States is commendable. Anyone interested in the study of western history and culture will find something to add to his or her understanding of the western region in this atlas. On the other hand, many readers will …

Review Of Goff On Goff: Conversations And Lectures Edited By Phillip B. Welch, Carl Matthews

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Bruce Goff's career as an architect and educator spanned almost seven decades with some five hundred buildings designed and 147 built. In 1916, at the age of twelve, he was apprenticed to the architectural firm of Rush, Endacott & Rush in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was promoted to partner at age twenty-five. After serving in the military in the 1940s and a brief practice in Berkeley, California, Goff accepted a teaching position at the University of Oklahoma, recognized for one of the most creative programs in the country during this period, and quickly assumed the role of Department Chair. He resumed …

Review Of The Real West Commentary By Patricia Nelson Limerick, Robert Hower

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In an exhibition and publishing collaboration, the Colorado Historical Society, the Denver Art Museum, and the Denver Public Library provide an absorbing visual and conceptual experience titled The Real West. Its strength is the manner in which the publishers have provided a novel visual statement through the color plates and photographs that comprise over 75 percent of the book.

The volume represents the effort of numerous individuals: Andrew E. Masich wrote the Introduction; Patricia Nelson Limerick authored the Commentary; Georgianna Contiguglia, Gwen F. Chanzit, and Eleanor Gehres collaborated on the Afterword. The text provides a frame of reference for …