Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Japanese Brome Impacts On Western Wheatgrass In Northern Great Plains Rangelands: An Update, M. R. Haferkamp, R. K. Heitschmidt

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

Japanese brome (Bromus japonicas Thunb.) is an annual grass that has invaded thousands of hectares of Northern Great Plains rangelands. We studied the effect of Japanese brome on the current year's increase in biomass in a plant community in the Northern Great Plains dominated by western wheatgrass [Pascopyrum smithii Rydb. (Love)]. In our experiment, brome seedlings were either removed or left in place in replicated l-m² plots. Above-ground biomass of western wheatgrass increased (891 to 1,095 kg ha^-1 ) with the removal of Japanese brome. However, total above-ground biomass decreased (1,873 to 1,334 kg ha^{-1 …}

Greater Prairie-Chicken Harvest In Kansas: Early Vs. Regular Seasons, Francis E. Durbian, Iii, Elmer J. Finck, Roger D. Applegate

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

Remnant populations of the greater prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus) in Kansas are managed to maintain population size while providing recreational hunting potential. Our aim in this study was to evaluate the effect of adding an early hunting season (late September-October) to the regular season (November-late January). We compared the hunting methods used and the harvest of greater prairie chickens during early and regular hunting seasons for 1990-91 and 1991-92. The use of dogs and walkup hunting techniques were emphasized in early season, whereas pass shooting in feeding fields was emphasized in the regular season. During early season, …

Nonagricultural Benefits Of Windbreaks In Kansas, Ted T. Cable

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

This paper reviews the evidence for nonagricultural benefits of windbreaks in the Great Plains. Windbreaks may provide recreational opportunities, scenic beauty, fuelwood, and wildlife habitat in addition to agricultural benefits. Quantitative studies demonstrate that windbreaks on the Great Plains provides important wildlife habitat for woodland edge species, substantial opportunities for recreation, a potentially important source of fuelwood, and enhanced scenic beauty.

Book Notes

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

Books:

Americans View Their Dust Bowl Experience
Averting Extinction: Reconstructing Endangered Species Recovery
Common Fossil Plants of Western North America
Gender in Archaeology: Analyzing Power and Prestige
Reading and Writing the Lakota Language: Lakota Iyapi Un Wowapi Nahan Yawapi
The Student's Dictionary of Literary Plains Cree Based on Contemporary Texts

Review Of Western Visions: Perspectives On The West In Canada By Roger Gibbons And Sonia Arrison, Michael D. Behiels

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

In the 1997 Canadian election, Preston Manning's Reform Party emerged as Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition with 60 seats in the House of Commons. The Liberal Governing Party of Prime Minister Jean Chretien would have been reduced to a minority had Liberals not won 101 of Ontario's 103 seats. Why and how did this development occur? What are some of its probable consequences? Western Visions provides a timely and revealing set of answers to these questions so closely related to Canada's perennial national unity crisis. Most academics and interested citizens think about that crisis primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of …

Great Plains Research Awards

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

Contents:

Leslie Hewes Award (1998)
Great Plains Research Science Award (1999)

Review Of Inventing The Savage: The Social Construction Of Native American Criminality By Luana Ross, Elizabeth Grobsmith

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

Despite the growing literature on Native American crime and delinquency, alcoholism and unemployment, and the social ills that plague both urban and reservation Indians, there is a true dearth of information on incarcerated American Indians. Yet Indians comprise disproportionately high percentages of prisoners in all state penal facilities and federal prisons as well. Several factors account for this dearth. First, conducting sociological or anthropological research among incarcerated individuals certainly poses challenges. Second, the presumption that Native Americans prefer not to be studied or analyzed may deter some from considering research on such topics. Third, there is so little literature on …

Review Of Two Spirit People: American Indian Lesbian Women And Gay Men Edited By Lester B. Brown, Carolyn Epple

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

Lester Brown's edited volume acquaints social workers with "two spirits," that is, those Native Americans who are "gay," "lesbian," or who may adopt mixed-gender practices and roles. Although well-intended, the attempts to sensitize social workers to Natives' lives are occasionally thwarted by overgeneralizations and weak analyses.

In the three chapters on identity, the intricacies of culture, gender, and sexuality theory are watered down and confused. In their comparison of Lakota and Dakota practices, Little Crow, Judy Wright, and Brown conjure the odd label "non-heterosexual gender identity" and collapse gender into sexuality. Mary Ann Jacobs and Lester Brown's piece often homogenizes …

Review Of The Diefenbaker Legacy: Canadian Politics, Law And Society Since 1957 Edited By D.C. Story And R. Bruce Shepard, William Neville

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

John Diefenbaker, Canada's Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, remarked during his last campaigns as Conservative Party leader, "Everybody is against me but the people." The comment, though a quintessential expression of his populism (lightly laced with a touch of paranoia), was not altogether inaccurate. Even after his defeat, Diefenbaker enjoyed folk-hero status with many of those he called "average Canadians," but continued, largely, to be dismissed as an incompetent failure by the country's political, academic, and journalistic elites. Denis Smith's 1995 biography, Rogue Tory, was the first balanced, albeit critical, examination of Diefenbaker's career. This new collection of …

Review Of Reconciling Ecosystem And Political Borders: A Legal Map By Arlene J. Kwasniak, Elaine L. Hughes

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

In language accessible to the lay public, Arlene Kwasniak's Reconciling Ecosystem and Political Borders: A Legal Map provides an overview of the bewildering array of legal rights and legislative dictates that influence the ability of land managers to develop scientifically rational programs for ecosystem protection. The book's stated purposes are "to identify and describe all of the numerous ways those with legal rights to affect an ecosystem may affect it, and to try to figure out how to coordinate these numerous ways to maintain and restore ecosystems." The volume focuses deliberately on the use of law to protect ecosystems and …

Review Of An Atlas Of The Sand Hills, Walter H. Schacht

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

The Sand Hills region, the largest stabilized sand dune formation in the western hemisphere, presents a varied landscape from lush, productive wetlands to wind-swept dune tops with frequent "blowouts." Covering about twelve million acres in central and north central Nebraska, it represents about 25% of the state's surface area. The region's extreme importance to Nebraska-residing in its vast supply of forage for beef cattle production, its critical role in recharging the High Plains Aquifer, and its aesthetic and recreational values-has long made it a major topic of study for students in agricultural and natural resource sciences. Moreover, coursework related to …

Review Of Ecology And Conservation Of Great Plains Vertebrates Edited By Fritz L. Knopf And Fred B. Samson, Rolf Koford

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

Focusing on the plight of natural ecosystems in the Great Plains, Fritz Knopf and Fred Samson give prominent coverage to the region's “charismatic megafauna" and provide an excellent overview of the ecology and conservation of most vertebrate taxa. The editors granted their individual authors considerable leeway, resulting in contributions that are authoritative but unintegrated with each other. For example, in the Preface and most of the chapters, the Great Plains includes the tall grass prairie as well as the short and mixed grass prairie traditionally associated with the Great Plains region. In chapters on wetlands and fishes, tall grass prairie …

Review Of The Brandon Teena Story Produced And Directed By Susan Muska And Greta Olafsdottir, June Perry Levine

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

CRIME AND RESPONSIBILITY

The Brandon Teena Story, Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir's recently released documentary, addresses the circumstances of a triple murder that occurred on the last day of December 1993 in a rural farmhouse in southeastern Nebraska. The crime received national media coverage because one of its victims, the principal target of the attack, was a young woman who had, for some time, been living as a man. The two other victims, a young man and woman, were killed because they were witnesses. The murderers were quickly apprehended and tried, one sentenced to life in prison, the other …

Review Of Profiles In Dissent: The Shaping Of Radical Thought In The Canadian West By Harry Gutkin And Mildred Gutkin, James Naylor

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The social explosion of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 was the product of various combustibles, both material and ideological. In this collective biography of ten arrested strike leaders, Harry and Mildred Gutkin explore the ideas and experiences that led individuals to play prominent roles in the strike. This is an effective approach, allowing the authors to trace individually the various strands of social radicalism that crossed in the spring of 1919 and to follow their post-strike trajectories. Some of the subjects are familiar, such as future Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) leader J. S. Woodsworth. Others have received far too …

Review Of Billy The Kid: His Life And Legend By Jon Tuska, Richard W. Etulain

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Jon Tuska is a leading authority on Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War. In fact, in the opening chapter of this reprinted book (originally published by Greenwood Press in 1994), Tuska exhibits his tenacious pursuit of nearly every fact about these much-researched subjects. This one-hundred-page section, illustrating Tuska's diligence, will be particularly useful to all specialists and general readers. Unfortunately, however, the author's flawed approach to his subject seriously limits the book's overall value.

Most of all, T uska attempts to provide a sound historical chronology of the major events of Billy the Kid's life and the Lincoln …

Review Of The Social Gospel Of E. Nicholas Comfort: Founder Of The Oklahoma School Of Religion By Robert C. Cottrell, Leslie Hewes

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Early in the autumn of 1924, when I attended my first Saturday night open house at the First Presbyterian Church in Norman, Oklahoma, the newly appointed student pastor, Nick Comfort, made me feel at home by saying, "We are both freshmen." Next year, after I had satisfied most freshman requirements, I enrolled in a course on comparative religion at the University of Oklahoma taught by Rev. Comfort.

The social gospel, as pointed out by Cottrell repeatedly, emphasized the "fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man." As espoused by Comfort, the gospel was egalitarian, without color barriers, non-violent, nonsectarian, and based …

Review Of Comparing Cowboys And Frontiers By Richard W. Slatta, Thomas D. Hall

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The goal of this collection is to encourage the comparative study of frontiers and social history. The first part, six chapters, focuses on "Topics" for comparisons, while the second part, four chapters, discusses how to do comparative history and critically evaluates much recent work. Slatta begins with a comparative discussion of the Venezuelan Llanos, southern Chile, the Pampas, Brazil, and the Great Plains of North America, suggesting that a frontier is a membrane metaphor through which objects, people, and ideas pass in both directions.

Slatta then discusses how indigenous peoples quickly adopted feral (or sometimes stolen) horses, which led to …

Review Of Updating The Literary West Sponsored By The Western Literature Association, Barbara Howard-Meldrum

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When A Literary History of the American West (LHAW) appeared in 1987, it legitimized the field of western American literary studies, defining a tradition and a canon. Yet even as that lengthy volume was completed, the indefiniteness of its title-A, not The-called for a sequel. Updating the Literary West (ULW) provides that necessary sequel, not simply updating but in significant ways reconstructing the West's literary history.

The central core of the new volume provides most of the updating. Some of the authors given individual chapters in LHAW reappear with discussions of their recent works and reviews …

Book Notes- Spring 1999

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

BOOK NOTES

Fort Riley and Its Neighbors: Military Money and Economic Growth, 1853-1895. By William A. Dobak

The Surrender and Death of Crazy Horse: A Source Book About a Tragic Episode in Lakota History. Volume XXI of the Frontier Military Series. Compiled and edited by Richard G. Hardorff

The Architecture and Art of Early Hispanic Colorado. By Robert Adams

William H. Emory: Soldier-Scientist. By L. David Norris, James C. Milligan, and Odie B. Faulk

Essie's Story: The Life and Legacy of a Shoshone Teacher. By Esther Burnett Horne and Sally McBeth

Of Earth and Elders: Visions and Voices …

Review Of El Llano Estacada: Exploration And Imagination On The High Plains Of Texas And New Mexico, 1536-1860 By John Miller Morris, Valerie M. Mendoza

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

El Llano Estacado is located on the High Plains of eastern New Mexico and western Texas covering over 50,000 square miles of land, and may be, according to Morris, the "largest isolated non-mountainous area in North America." It is the creation of this landscape in the European mind that Morris proposes to study. In his words, "the landscape itself is the hero" of the story.

In this respect Morris succeeds. Through his use of Spanish and American exploration texts (letters, journals, official reports, reminiscences), he conveys the mental representations of this region. In addition to textual analysis, he also uses …

Review Of Tejano Legacy: Rancheros And Settlers In South Texas, 1734-1900 By Armando Alonzo, Arnoldo De Leon

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Tejano Legacy depicts Mexican Americans in Texas-the subjects of the inquiry-as historical actors engaged in a process of adjustment to wrest a living from a rough physical setting and a constantly changing social environment. Their experience in the Texas Borderlands resembled that of other settlers in the trans-Mississippi West who confronted similar forces.

The author wishes to revise and update numerous long-standing interpretations of Texas-Mexican life in the Lower Valley of Texas (which includes those counties in deep South Texas that parallel the Rio Grande). He posits that Tejano history in the region begins with the first colonies founded during …

Review Of Many Danes, Some Norwegians: Karen Miller's Diary, 1894 Edited By John W. Nielsen, Ann Marie Legreid

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Letters, diaries, and other amateur writings provide an important prospect on the immigrant experience in America. Literary expressions of this kind are valuable; while mundane and archaic-sounding, they inform us of the lives of immigrants, their perceptions, their everyday encounters with a larger world. Many Danes, Some Norwegians is the diary of Karen Miller (Moller), a Danish immigrant who wrote from her home at Elko, Scott County, rural Minnesota, in 1894, a year before her death. The original manuscript was translated by Olaf M. Norlie in 1952, then mimeographed and bound. The current version was translated by Ninna Engskow using …

The "In Between" Landscapes Of Transformation In Ted Kooser's Weather Central, Mary Lou K. Stillwell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"Etude," which launches Weather Central, Ted Kooser's most recent full-length collection of poems, is in many ways typical of the poet's work. The poem is what it professes to be: an etude, a study, a preview of all the poems that are to follow. It also defines the major poetic devices or characteristics that will be important throughout the 1994 volume: direct, plain-spoken language; use of interior and exterior landscape{s); and explicit metaphor that particularizes the poet's life.

Many of us who make our home on the plains recognize the Great Blue Heron in the cattails, the bubbles along the …

A Topographic Map Of Words Parables Of Cartography In William Least Heat,Moon's Prairyerth, O. Alan Weltzien

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In "Thought and Landscape," geographer Yi-Fu Tuan describes an essential double perspective required for any comprehensive understanding of rural landscape. A geographer studies landscape "from 'above,'" for example, but "The side view ... is personal, moral, and aesthetic. A person is in the landscape ... from a particular spot and not from an abstract point in space. If the essential character of landscape is that it combines these two views (objective and subjective), it is clear that the combination can take place only in the mind's eye. Landscape appears to us through an effort of the imagination .... It is …

Review Of Harvesting The High Plains: John Kriss And The Business Of Wheat Farming, 1920-1950 By Craig Miner, David B. Danbom

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Craig Miner uses the life and career of Cobly, Kansas-based megafarmer John Kriss to make two points. He argues first that, far from being the forbidding desert suggested by the Dust Bowl experience, the High Plains is an area where productive dry-farming of wheat can be undertaken profitably by intelligent and alert producers. And second, he contends that farming is a business to which planning, efficiency, and economies of scale can and should be applied, regardless of romantic notions about the mythic "family farm."

Kriss is the right sort of farmer to illustrate these points. Starting but as a farm …

Review Of Capturing Women: The Manipulation Of Cultural Imagery In Canada's Prairie West By Sarah Carter, Catherine Cavanaugh

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Capturing Women, an extended essay examining the role of Indian captivity narratives in racializing prairie society, is a welcome addition to prairie history, which has been particularly resistant to gender and race analysis. In this small volume Sarah Carter takes up both of these subjects in the context of nineteenth-century imperialism. Beginning with a close reading of Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear: The Life and Adventures of Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delany, she shows how captivity narrative was used to reestablish white male authority in the aftermath of what has become known as the Second …

Review Of Fugitives From Justice: The Notebook Of Texas Ranger Sergeant James B. Gillette By James B. Gillette, Mary Ellis

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In 1878 the Texas Adjutant General issued each Texas Ranger a book listing all known fugitives from justice to assist in apprehending criminals. The book served as a blanket arrest warrant, listing more than 4,000 fugitives who were wanted in Texas for crimes such as murder, rape, serious assaults, and horse thefts. Organized by county, the list gave the name, crime, date of indictment, and occasionally the physical description of each fugitive. While on the move, Texas lawmen carried the book with them as a quick and easy reference tool whenever they located a suspected criminal.

Fugitives from Justice is …

Essay On Place The Map As Big As The World, Thomas Fox Averill

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

I have spent a lot of time looking at Kansas maps. Once, I memorized the shapes and names of all lOS counties. On another map, I drew in red magic marker over each highway after I had traveled it, hoping, someday, to have traveled every mile in this 200-by-400-mile rectangle. A huge old school map of Kansas, published by A. J. Nystrom & Co., Chicago, hangs in my east study windows instead of curtains or shades. On sunny mornings, it glows, and since its color comes from elevation- the "3,000 to 4,000 Feet" in western Kansas, to the "Under 1,000 …

Review Of The Journals Of The Lewis & Clark Expedition, Volume 11: The J Oumals Of Joseph Whitehouse, May 14, 1804-April2, 1806 Edited By Gary E. Moulton, Kerry R. Oman, Fred R. Gowens

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This eleventh volume in the series of the Louis and Clark Expedition continues Gary Moulton's masterful work. Here the story of the journey is seen through the eyes of one of the enlisted men, Joseph Whitehouse, whose journal is the only surviving record of a. private on the expedition. In the introduction, Moulton briefly covers Whitehouse's life before and after the expedition, although there is little known of him during these times. He was one of the men who joined Lewis at Kaskasia, from Captain Russell Bissell's company of the First Infantry. The volume itself contains two versions of Whitehouse's …

Review Of An Army Of Women: Gender And Politics In Gilded Age Kansas By Michael Lewis Goldberg, Carmen Heider

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Michael Goldberg, a cultural historian of politics, undertakes a valuable study of the dynamic relationship between politics and gender. His argument is, simply, that to fully understand the actors and organizations in Gilded Age Kansas politics, we must "integrate gender into their story." This "cast of political players" includes the Farmer's Alliance, the Woman Movement, Populists, Republicans, Democrats, Prohibitionists, and activist leaders such as Annie Diggs and Mary Lease, all of whom are situated within religious, economic, racial, and ethnic contexts. To explore the gendered relationships between and among these groups and individuals, Goldberg uses organizational records, songs, and a …