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Title And Contents- Spring 1999

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 19/ Number 2 / Spring 1999

Contents

Introduction: Imagining Literary Landscapes

History And Nature: Representations Of The Great Plains In The Work Of Sharon Butala And Wallace Stegner

The "In-Between": Landscapes Of Transformation In Ted Kooser's Weather Central

A Topographic Map Of Words: Parables Of Cartography In William Least Heat-Moon's Prairyerth

Essay On Place: The Map As Big As The World

Review Essay: Crime And Responsibility

Book Reviews

Book Notes

Notes And News

Review Of Encyclopedia Of The American West By Charles Phillips And Alan Axelrod, Jay H. Buckley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The goal of encyclopedias is to make knowledge readily and objectively available to a wide audience. Generally massive undertakings requiring a number of years to complete, they succeed or fail depending not only on accuracy but on their flexibility as reference works to interest a wide range of audiences, both as stopping or starting points for research. Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, no strangers to undertaking large projects such as biographical dictionaries, have compiled an excellent Encyclopedia of the American West.

Joining Howard W. Lamar's masterful Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West (1977), now available in a revised edition …

Review Of Frontiers Of Historical Imagination: Narrating The European Conquest Of Native America, 1890-1990 By Kerwin Lee Klein, Alex Long

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Frontiers of Historical Imagination, Kerwin Klein traces the changes in the historical discourse of the European conquest of Native America. This interdisciplinary and wide-ranging study synthesizes twentieth-century historiography, encompassing debates in history, anthropology, literary criticism, and the philosophy of history. While Frederick Jackson Turner's writings serve as organizing texts for Klein's account, the changing interpretations and narratives of the American frontier provide the thematic focus.

Klein arranges his study into four books, each in turn, organized around a trope-a la Hayden White's Metahistory: metaphor ("The Language of History")' metonym ("From Spirit to System"), synecdoche ("Time Immemorial"), and …

Review Of Policing The Elephant: Crime, Punishment, And Social Behavior On The Overland Trail By John Phillip Reid, Lorna R. Mclean

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Policing the Elephant is a companion volume to John Reid's Law for the Elephant: Property and Social Behavior on the Overland Trail (1980). Through an incisive analysis of the diaries, journals, and letters of emigrants crossing from Missouri or Iowa to Oregon or California, Reid examines how overland travellers experienced and responded to anti-social actions and theii' punishment. Along the trail, emigrants watched for the elephant. "To see the elephant," Reid explains, "meant undergoing hardships, to learn the realities of a situation firsthand, or to encounter the unbelievable."

Reid skillfully adapts the symbol of the elephant to explore what average …

Review Of The Powder River Expedition Journals Of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge Edited By Wayne R. Kime, R. Eli Paul

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Richard 1. Dodge served in the United States Army from 1848 to 1891. By the time of the 1876 Powder River Expedition, one of several military responses to the crushing defeat suffered at the Little Big Horn, Dodge had reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. At the behest of Brig. Gen. George Crook he accepted the command of the infantry contingent of this winter campaign against SiouxCheyenne foes.

The campaign met with some success, and many historians consider it the beginning of the end of the Great Sioux War. On 25 November 1876, a Cheyenne village of Chief Dull Knife …

Review Of Many Wests: Place, Culture, And Regional Identity Edited By David M. Wrobel And Michael C. Steiner, Diane D. Quantic

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Anyone interested in any place west of the Mississippi will find some part of Many Wests valuable. Editors David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner have collected essays that, in content and style, confirm the variety in the over-used term the West. Divided into four sections, the essays concern "Environment and Economy," "Aesthetic Wests," "Race and Ethnicity," and "Extended Wests"-Alaska, Hawaii, and British Columbia. They range from historical surveys to engaging personal accounts like Bret Wallach's essay focusing on typical Oklahoma houses and the people who inhabit them. Some scholars concentrate on a unique aspect of a region. Ann Hyde …

Review Of Cowboy Fiddler In Bob Wills' Band By Frankie Mcwhorter, John Schmitz

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Reading this book, as written in Frankie McWhorter's own words, is like being out on the West Texas Plains, sitting around the campfire listening to a veteran cowboy tell his stories. It has an authentic bunkhouse feeling, deservedly so coming from a man who has spent almost fifty years as a working cowboy.

The book is written in two-part form. The first half deals with McWhorter's musical background and his time in the Bob Wills band. The latter half recounts McWhorter's experiences as a working cowboy. McWhorter's family lived in the Texas Panhandle town of Plaska, about twenty-five miles from …

History And Nature Representations Of The Great Plains In The Work Of Sharon Butala And Wallace Stegner, Walter Isle

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When he was five, Wallace Stegner's family moved to a small town and to a homestead on the Great Plains, in the extreme southwestern corner of Saskatchewan just above the Montana border, where they lived for six years before drought and crop failures forced them to move on. Sharon Butala moved to a ranch and farm in the same short-grass prairie country in 1976 when she was thirty-six years old and newly married to Peter Butala, a rancher native to the place. Both Stegner and Butala went on to write about this land, and their representations manifest very different attitudes …

Notes And News- Spring 1999

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Notes And News

In Memoriam

Indian Prose Award

Gpq's Home In Cyberspace

Communities Through Photographs

Montana Manuscript Prize

Life On The Great Plains

Cfp: Into The Next Millennium

Nebraska Research Grant

Great Plains Music, Dance, And ...Bison!

Introduction Imagining Literary Landscapes, Susan J. Rosowski

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In compiling this issue of Great Plains Quarterly, Charlene Porsild responds to issues at the heart of the rising "new regionalism." One premise of the renewed interest in regionalism is that learning to navigate the virtual world of cyberspace means needing to know place in the actual world, and understanding mapping means learning how to orient oneself, how to read a landscape, and how to move from one place to another. The four essays presented here offer complementary responses to that challenge.

One's stance in time undergirds one's relation to place, as Walter Isle demonstrates in "History and Nature: …

Factors In Rural Community Survival: Review Of Insights From Thriving Small Towns, Milan Wall

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

During the 1980s crisis in the agricultural economy, some observers claimed that many towns were too small, too isolated, or too distant from larger population centers to survive in times of economic turmoil. We decided to evaluate these assumptions through a series of in-depth case studies of thriving small communities in the Great Plains. The communities we studied fit the general description of towns that were doing better than expected. Using an anthropological approach, the teams of field researchers from the Heartland Center for Leadership Development visited communities, ranging in size from 300 to 6,000, in Colorado, the Dakotas, Kansas, …

Review Of Managing Growth In America's Communities By Douglas R. Porter, Gordon Scholz

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

About 80% of America's population now lives in metropolitan areas, and almost 90% of recent population growth has occurred in towns, cities, and urban communities. The increasing urbanization of America has led to growth pressures in many communities, large and small. And although growth is championed by a majority of American communities for economic reasons, the repercussions of fast-paced urban development have caused many places to consider and adopt better ways of guiding the composition, quality, and location of future expansion.

Review Of Rural Gays And Lesbians: Building On The Strengths Of Communities Edited By James Donald Smith And Ronald J. Mancoske, Stephan T. Russell

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

Rural gay men and lesbians face unique challenges when seeking resources and services in times of need, as do the social workers attempting to offer them aid. Written by and for social services audiences, Rural Gays and Lesbians includes articles about these issues, as well as poetry about rural life from the perspective of lesbians and gays. Editors Smith and Mancoske attempt to fill a void in writings about contemporary social work. Unfortunately, the volume's significant weaknesses leave the reader without the understanding of ways to build on community strengths promised in the title.

Review Of Public Enterprise In An Era Of Change Edited By John R. Allan, Ken Dennis

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

This collection of fifteen papers-lively, diverse and (for the most part) mercifully concise-derives from a December 1996 conference in Regina on the role and future of Saskatchewan's crown corporations. Arguably the most qualified jurisdiction in North America to host such a conference, Saskatchewan is well represented in these pages, though the papers by no means limit themselves to the experience of this province. Nor do they confine themselves to the broad subject of public enterprise. Participants came from most regions of Canada, while the keynote speaker, David Heald, added a British/European perspective to the proceedings. Included among the participants were …

The Platte River Cooperative Agreement: A Basin-Wide Approach To Endangered Species Issue, Allan Jenkins

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

This paper reviews current endangered species issues associated with the development of the Platte River and the "Cooperative Agreement for Platte River Research and Other Efforts Relating to Endangered Species Habitats." The Platte River is an important economic resource, providing water essential for irrigation in a highly productive, but semiarid, agricultural region. However, the Middle Platte region of south central Nebraska is also recognized as a critical environmental zone for several endangered species. Thus, Platte River water users are subject to the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. In 1994, the Governors of Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming agreed to work …

Review Of Archaeology On The Great Plains Edited By W. Raymond Wood, Philip Duke

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

Plains archaeologists have long awaited a worthy successor to Waldo Wedel's magisterial Prehistoric Man on the Great Plains (1961). W. Raymond Wood's edited volume pretty much fills the master's very large shoes. As befits the increase in the size of the database and our understanding of the complexity of cultural dynamics on the Plains since Wedel's publication, the fourteen topics into which the book is divided are each examined by different collaborators: "Introduction" (W. Raymond Wood); "The Great Plains Setting" (Marvin Kay); "A History of Great Plains Prehistory" (Richard A. Krause); "The Paleo-Indian Cultures of the Great Plains" (Jack L. …

News And Notes

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

Contents:

Calls for papers for special issues
Calls for papers
Conferences

Late Prehistoric High Plains Foragers: Starving Nomads, Affluent Foragers?, Luann Wandsnider

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

Past human groups of the High Plains have been variously characterized as starving nomads and affluent foragers. In fact, these terms do not capture the multi-faceted nature of the human foraging experience on the High Plains. Relying on human ecology and archaeological interpretations, this paper examines the coping strategies used by Late Prehistoric foragers in the high variance environment of the High Plains, which was relatively less variable during the early part of the Late Prehistoric time period and more variable in the later part.

Review Of The Texas Red River Country: The Official Survey Of The Headwaters, 1876 Edited By T. Lindsay Baker, John Allen

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

This slim volume contains a reprint of Lt. E. H. Ruffner's 1876 official survey of the sources of the Red River of Texas, along with civilian draftsman C. A. Hunnius's journal and maps, and the ornithological notes of Lt. C. A. H. McCauley. The book is a great deal more than its size or the seemingly obscure nature of its subject matter would indicate. At the beginning of the Ruffner survey, the Red River was one of the few major American rivers still unsurveyed to its sources-an incredible affair in light of Thomas Jefferson's noting in 1803 that locating the …

Review Of Cowbirds And Other Brood Parasites By Catherine P. Ortega, Paul Porneluzi

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

Your attitude toward cowbirds and other brood parasites may be largely influenced by the nature of your experience with them. If your primary contact with brood parasites occurs when they appear with the host species you are watching, studying, or researching, it is easy to side with those who have characterized cowbirds as feathered wretches, social outcasts, arch villains, or pests of the highest order. If the focus of your attention is on cowbirds themselves, however, you may be more likely to view them as highly adapted, fascinating components of the ecosystem. If you are not already in the second …

Review Of Ghost Dancing The Law: The Wounded Knee Trials By John William Sayer, Leonard R. Bruguier

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

Word Wars: American Indian Movement agenda versus the United States’ judicial system. In a smoothly written analysis of the 1974 trial of Russell Means and Dennis Banks for "criminal acts" committed during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, John Sayer provides an evocative chronology of events and ideals that influenced the St. Paul trial. Woven throughout the narrative are parallel examples of historic revolutionary movements and leaders, a device allowing readers to compare and contrast the possibilities and pitfalls inherent in ideological revolutions. Set in the turbulence of Watergate and media hysteria, the Wounded Knee trials lead Sayer to ask …

Review Of Natural Resource And Environmental Economics By Tony Prato, Raymond Supalla

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

This upper-division or beginning graduate-level text addresses the economics of a broad range of natural resource and environmental issues in a style suitable for a wide range of students interested in natural resource policy. Economics students will find the subject matter a bit easier to grasp than biologists, engineers, or political scientists, but it should pose no problem for anyone who has taken a course in micro-economics and perhaps knows a bit of differential calculus.

The book's content and organization are somewhat different from most texts in resource economics. There is greater emphasis here on the economic concepts associated with …

Review Of American Indian Languages: Cultural And Social Contexts By Shirley Silver And Wick R. Miller, Catherine Rudin

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

This wide-ranging volume, appropriately dedicated to the pioneering linguist and tireless teacher of American Indian linguistics Mary Haas, proposes "to introduce the general reader to the mosaic of American Indian languages and cultures." It carries off this tall order quite well, presenting a wealth of information about the current usage, history, and structure of the hundreds of indigenous languages of the Americas, their relations with each other and with European colonial languages, and the various ways in which linguists study and classify them. Enough technical linguistic concepts are introduced to allow a determined and serious reader to gain a deep …

Effect Of Winter Wheat Seeding Date On Soil Erosion In The West-Central Great Plains, S. J. Meyer, Drew J. Lyon, D. D. Baltensperger

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

In the west-central Great Plains, the risk of soil erosion due to wind is high, particularly during winter. One way to reduce soil erosion is to plant winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L. ) early in the season, so that the crop establishes four tillers prior to the onset of winter dormancy. Currently, however, wheat is seeded late in the planting season to reduce disease and insect infestation. In this study, we evaluated potential soil erosion in relation to seeding date. Using historical climate data, we determined the probability that winter wheat plants will establish four tillers prior to dormancy …

Great Plains Research, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 1999 - Contents

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

Table of contents

Is The Family Disappearing? Northern Great Plains Vs. National Trends In Family Structure, Larry D. Peterson

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

This study compares recent trends in family structure between the nation and the northern Great Plains states of Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, using census data from 1950 to 1990. I focus on patterns in two-parent and non-two parent families, and on married women in the labor force, to evaluate Popenoe's thesis that the American family has been declining since 1960. Two explanations for the differences from national trends have been proposed for families on the Great Plains: they are exceptions to national trends or they only lag behind national trends. Analysis of the rate of change from …

Letter From The Social Sciences Associate Director

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

Exciting changes at Great Plains Research (GPR) are occurring. As the new Associate Editor for the social sciences, I will be encouraging and handling submissions relevant to the social sciences, including anthropology, cultural science, economics, ethnography, family science, psychology, and sociology. Our aim is to expand the scope of high quality submissions to GPR in several ways. First, we are working to add major abstract and indexing services in the social sciences. We understand the importance of promoting the impact of our published work. Second, we are soliciting synthesis and thoughtful reviews of major social issues for the Great Plains …

Review Of Environmental Policy And Nepa: Past, Present, And Future Edited By Ray Clark And Larry Canter, Dean B. Suagee

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

This book offers a great deal of information and insight regarding the way the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) works, or fails to work, or does not work as well as it should. Comprised of twenty-two chapters written by twenty-eight authors and co-authors, it presents a variety of viewpoints from people who bring different kinds of experience to their analyses, including six academicians and eight federal government agency workers. Some see NEPA as a law that brought fundamental change to the way federal agencies make decisions on proposed actions that may affect the environment; some see it as a law …

Response Of Breeding Birds In The Great Plains To Low Density Urban Sprawl, David Engle, Tania L. Criner, Jon C. Boren, Ronald E. Masters, Mark C. Gregory

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

Low-density development consumes large tracts of the rural landscape surrounding Great Plains cities. Our objective was to determine how low-density sprawl influences the presence of birds. We used logistic regression models developed for two eastern Great Plains study areas for 1966-1990 to determine the probability of occurrence of bird species on the same areas in 1902. The two areas experienced different levels of low-density urban sprawl from 1902-1990. Birds associated with forests and forest edge are expected to decrease in both areas. Some of these are species of high concern. Dickcissel, a grassland bird, is expected to increase in the …

Review Of Holding Our Ground: Protecting America's Farms And Farmlands By Tom Daniels And Deborah Bowers, Julia Freedgood

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

Holding Our Ground is an ambitious attempt to help private landowners and communities devise strategies to protect farmland from poorly planned development, or sprawl. Daniels and Bowers articulate the importance of farmland to communities and persuasively advocate balanced growth that includes a dynamic role for agriculture. The authors are seasoned practitioners who have experienced the socio-political dynamics that make farmland protection a challenging task. They appreciate the value of farmland as an economic asset providing an attractive landscape as an associated benefit, and they emphasize the importance of agriculture as an industry that both relies on and supports an infrastructure …