Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

The First Phase Of Destruction Killing The Southern Plains Buffalo, 1790-1840, Pekka Hamalainen

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The eradication of the vast bison herds from the North American Great Plains is one of the oldest topics in western history and, recently, also one of the most popular. Drawing ideas and methodologies from ecology and zoology, historians have revealed in the 1990s an entirely new anatomy of the destruction. According to the new interpretation, the great slaughter of the 1870s merely delivered a clinching blow to herds that had already been weakened in a number of ways. Concentrating on the Southern Plains, Dan Flores has concluded that large-scale dying may have begun as early as 1840, when a …

Notes And News- Spring 2001

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Notes and News- Spring 2001

Circles Of Knowledge: Plains Indian Education

Marl Sandoz Heritage Society: Call For Papers

Missouri Valley History Conference: Call For Papers

Great Plains Chautauqua Society

Internet Resources On The Great Plains

Tribal Colleges

"The Last Buffalo Hunt" And Beyond Plains Sioux Economic Strategies In The Early Reservation Period, Jeffrey Ostler

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Sometime in late May 1882, several thousand bison appeared on the Great Sioux reservation about 100 miles west of the Standing Rock Indian agency (see Fig. O. According to James McLaughlin, the Standing Rock agent, the Indians knew "instinctively" that the buffalo had arrived, even though "it had been many years since the buffalo had sought the hunting-grounds of that part of the reservation." With this "rich store of succulent meat in sight," McLaughlin continued, "it was not possible that the Indians could be held in check." On 10 June, over 600 Standing Rock Lakota and Yanktonais left the agency. …

The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, Susan Wunder, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The summer of 2000 marked the grand opening of the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument just east of Kearney, Nebraska, on Interstate 80. Costing approximately $60 million the site features exhibits on the history of the American West in the first and only "museum" to straddle an interstate highway. At the 16 July grand opening, former Nebraska Governor Frank Morrison, a spry ninety-five years, reminisced before an audience of over six hundred, including both of Nebraska's US senators and its current governor, about having realized his dream of honoring the nation's westward movement.

Coverage of the event in the …

Essay: Bison Restoration In The Great Plains And The Challenge Of Their Management, Judith L. Mcdonald

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

Efforts to save remnant wild bison from extermination have resulted in the establishment of herds on private, public, and tribal lands. Ironically, their successful restoration has evolved into a profitable agricultural industry and a practical alternative to raising domestic cattle. Bison restoration actively managed by humans raises ecological, ethical, and evolutionary questions about whether we are compromising their native ability to function in a grasslands ecosystem. In this essay I examine current bison management practices, conflicting human values about land-use practices, and emerging land-use initiatives focusing on wild bison and ecosystem restoration in the northern Great Plains.

Review Of Texas Bug Book: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly By C. Malcolm Beck And John Howard Garrett, W. Eugene Hall

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

Seeing the title of this book prior to reading it, I was a bit concerned about its content and possible negative outlook towards insects. Having worked as an entomologist the past sixteen years and possessing a lifelong appreciation for insects and other arthropods, I tend to think of all insects as "good," very few if any of them "bad," and none of them "ugly." Like it or not, every species of insect serves a positive or beneficial purpose in the great scheme of things within the natural world. Insects ruled this planet long before humankind became established, continue to dominate …

Latinos Along The Platte: The Hispanic Experience In Central Nebraska, Roger Davis

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

This essay examines the arrival and growth of Latino population, principally Mexican American, into the Platte River valley region of Nebraska from 1890 to 1996. It outlines the history of the push and pull factors of immigration from Mexico and the various phases and characteristics of Latino settlement in the Midwest generally and in Nebraska specifically. It reviews demographic patterns over the 20th century and concludes with observations based upon census projections that indicate that the Nebraska Latino community will become the state's primary minority community by 2025.

Carbon Stable Isotope Analysis Of Bison Dentition, R. Mark Larson, Lawrence C. Todd, Eugene F. Kelly, Jeffrey M. Welker

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

Understanding how bison behaved in the past can provide key insights for today's managers, ecologists, and anthropologists. However, the direct application of both historic documentation and modern field observations may not provide the necessary insights for understanding bison behaviors in archeological and paleontological contexts. In order to develop a better understanding of possible behavior within these contexts, we have developed individual foraging histories for 22 Bison bison from the Glenrock Buffalo Jump assemblage of the Plains Late Prehistoric period in Wyoming and four Pleistocene B. priscus from the Ukraine. Incremental stable carbon isotopic values of dental enamel were used to …

Review Of The Ecological Indian: Myth And History By Shepard Krech Iii, John C. Mohawk

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

In The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, anthropologist Shepard Krech III sets out to prove that the image of the indigenous peoples and cultures of the Americas so regularly invoked to demonstrate humanity's capacity to live harmoniously with nature is a misleading one, more the product of image building by modern ecologists than a reality of history. That image of the American Indian as ecologist was epitomized in a 1971 Keep America Beautiful, Inc. campaign against litter depicting actor Iron Eyes Cody as a Native American who shed tears over thoughtless acts of littering and pollution. It was an …

Review Of The Encyclopedia Of Native American Economic History Edited By Bruce E. Johansen, John Moore

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

The publication of this reference work is well-timed to encourage a burgeoning new field of scholarship that cuts across the traditional disciplines of history, anthropology, economics, and political science. Since John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, economic history and political economy have occupied at least small sectors of these disciplines, but the field has been expanding in recent years thanks to the efforts of scholars who feel constrained by traditional disciplinary boundaries, scholars whose work is chronicled here.

Review Of The Smithsonian Book Of North American Mammals Edited By Don E. Wilson And Sue Ruff, Jerry Choate

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

In his 1982 Journal of Mammalogy review of E. Raymond Hall's epic tome The Mammals of North America (1981), J. Knox Jones Jr. opined, "It is unlikely that any other American mammalogist would have undertaken, or will undertake again, such a gigantic task." That statement remains valid only because Hall produced useful maps.

The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals is, in many respects, a companion volume to Wilson and Reeder's Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (1993). That book, like the present one, was a collaborative effort with the American Society of Mammalogists and the …

Great Plains Research Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2001 News And Notes

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

Contents:

Charles E. Bessey Award
Leslie Hewes Award
Great Plains Research Junior Science Award
Call for Papers

Where The Buffalo Roamed – Or Did They?, Richard Hart

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

Grazing management on the Great Plains has been criticized for not more closely matching the presumed grazing patterns of bison. The critics assume that bison "flash grazed," that is, grazed heavily for a short time, then moved on, and did not return for months or even years. This assumption complements the traditional view of an annual north-south migration of the herds. However, evidence from explorers' and other travelers' journals contradict both flash grazing and annual north-south migration. In a few cases where prolonged continuous observations were made in the same favorable habitat, bison were seldom absent. In Canada, bison sometimes …

Review Of Parks For Texas: Enduring Landscapes Of The New Deal By James Wright Steely, Kenneth Hendrickson, Jr.

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

This excellent study chronicles the growth of the Texas state park system from its beginnings in the 1880s to its maturity in the 1940s. Parks were established at first around historic sites from the Texas Revolution, and not until the 1920s did Governor Pat Neff envision the kind of modern park system that eventually developed. Even then, it was not until the 1930s that the system began to grow rapidly as a result of a federal-state partnership for Depression relief that provided the funds and labor to build fifty-two parks under the direction of the National Park Service.

Review Of The American Robin By Roland H. Wauer, Laura Erickson

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

Bookstore shelves bulge with bird books: field guides, feeding and birdhouse books, guides to hot spots, and books about individual families and species. One gaping hole in the body of bird literature has been a book about one of our most common and beloved songbirds, the American Robin. Robins nest in backyards and on buildings throughout much of the US and Canada and are one of the most familiar birds on the continent. A good book about them could fill an important niche.

Roland H. Wauer's lean volume is a start. Chapters include an overview of the robin's popularity, robin …

Review Of The Federal Landscape: An Economic History Of The Twentieth-Century By West. Gerald D. Nash, R. Douglas Hart

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

Without question, the federal government created the twentieth-century West. It built dams and distributed water to farmers and urbanites, constructed federal highways that permitted the development of the region's natural resources, established navy, army, and air force installations, and provided contracts for the post-World War II military-industrial complex and aerospace industry. By so doing, the federal government made an indelible imprint on the Western landscape, in much contrast to the nineteenth century when individual enterprise gave the region its economic, social, and political identity.

A Commentary On Bison And Cultural Restoration: Partnership Between The National Wildlife Federation And The Intertribal Bison Cooperative, Stephen Torbit, Louis Larose

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

In January 1997 the National Wildlife Federation and the InterTribal Bison Cooperative signed a memorandum of understanding formally recognizing our common goals of ending the slaughter of Yellowstone bison and working to repatriate buffalo to Native American reservations. It was the first time a formal relationship had ever been established between Native Americans and a national conservation organization. The partnership had two goals. The first goal was to reestablish management of North American bison as one of the premier wildlife species of the West, by restoring bison to those tribal and public land habitats capable of supporting their long-term survival. …

Review Of Theorizing The Bringing Back The Past: Historical Perspectives On Canadian Archaeology Edited By Pamela Jane Smith And Donald Mitchell, Raymond Le Blanc

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

Bringing Back the Past consists of a collection of papers about the development of archaeology in Canada, most of them based on presentations delivered in sessions at three annual meetings of the Canadian Archaeological Association beginning in 1994. The first of these was organized by Pamela Smith and the late William E. Taylor Jr.; Donald Mitchell collaborated with Smith after Taylor's untimely death in 1994.

Review Of Agrarian Socialism In America: Marx, Jefferson, And Jesus In The Oklahoma Countryside, 1904-1920 By Jim Bissett, Garin Burbank

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

Jim Bissett's well-written book on the Socialist Party of Oklahoma goes down a well-worn path. In his search for a usable past to illuminate the hidden strength of an authentic American radicalism, he finds roughly what most radical scholars find when they indict the spurious openness of American democracy (176). Oklahoma tenant-farmers are exploited, co-opted, and coerced; large landowners and commercial interests are by turns clever and rapacious; an effective protest movement inspires radical insurgents whose appeal becomes "extraordinarily powerful" for a short period (99); the movement becomes so threatening to the political and economic dominance of the "interests" that …

Great Plains Research Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2001 Contents

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

table of contents

What The Past Can Provide: Contribution Of Prehistoric Bison Studies To Modern Bison Management, Kenneth Cannon

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

For over 100 years, bison in the Greater Yellowstone Area have been managed intensely. Even during the years of "natural regulation," bison herds have been heavily managed by culling. One of the fundamental goals of the plan for the Greater Yellowstone Area is to maintain the ecosystem's integrity using sound science. In order to reach this goal, it must be recognized that it is a dynamic system, continually undergoing change. However, our knowledge of such changes is extremely limited. In the case of bison, our knowledge is based on nonsystematically collected historic records and modern studies of small, isolated populations. …

Trends. The Psycho-Politics Of Foot In Mouth On Foot In Mouth: Pigs, Sheep, Cows, Politicians On The Animal Farm, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses agricultural policy in the United Kingdom regarding foot and mouth disease of cloven-hoofed animals.

On The Rarity Of Food Provisioning By Male Dickcissels, Lawrence D. Igl, Louis B. Best

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Males of polygynous bird species typically provide less parental care to their offspring than males of monogamous species (Ketterson and Nolan 1994). Generally, in polygynous species, a male forfeits some potential reproductive success ifhe shifts his reproductive effort from mating with multiple females to parental care (Trivers 1972, Gubemick et al. 1993, Schleicher et al. 1993). In the polygynous dickcissel (Spiza americana), singing and foraging activities constitute much of a male's time-activity budget (Schartz and Zimmerman 1971, Finck 1984). Although male dickcissels are attentive to their nests and mates (e.g., nest protection and vigilance) females incubate the eggs …

Suggestions For Presenting The Results Of Data Analysis, David R. Anderson, William A. Link, Douglas H. Johnson, Kenneth P. Burnham

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

We give suggestions for the presentation of research results from frequentist, information-theoretic, and Bayesian analysis paradigms, followed by several general suggestions. The information-theoretic and Bayesian methods offer alternative approaches to data analysis and inference compared to traditionally used methods. Guidance is lacking on the presentation of results under these alternative procedures and on nontesting aspects of classical frequentist methods of statistical analysis. Null hypothesis testing has come under intense criticism. We recommend less reporting of the results of statistical tests of null hypotheses in cases where the null is surely false anyway, or where the null hypothesis is of little …

Statistics For Wildlifers: How Much And What Kind?, Douglas H. Johnson, Terry L. Shaffer, Wesley E. Newton

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Quantitative methods are playing increasingly important roles in wildlife ecology and, ultimately, management. This change poses a challenge for wildlife practitioners and students who are not well educated in mathematics and statistics. Here we give our opinions on what wildlife biologists should know about statistics, while recognizing that not everyone is inclined mathematically. For those who are, we recommend that they take mathematics coursework at least through calculus and linear algebra. They should take statistics courses that are focused conceptually, stressing the "why" rather than the "how" of doing statistics. For less mathematically oriented wildlifers, introductory classes in statistical techniques …

Effects Of Management Practices On Grassland Birds: Swainson’S Hawk, Jill A. Dechant, Meghan F. Dinkins, Douglas H. Johnson, Lawrence D. Igl, Christopher M. Goldade, Betty R. Euliss

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Swainson’s Hawk (Buteo swainsoni):
Breeding range
Suitable habitat
Prey habitat
Area requirements
Brown-headed Cowbird brood parasitism
Breeding-season phenology and site fidelity
Species’ response to management
Management Recommendations
Habitat Characteristics

Prevalence Of Giant Kidney Worm (Dioctophyma Renale) In Wild Mink (Mustela Vison) In Minnesota, L. David Mech, Shawn P. Tracy

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Of 138 wild mink (Mustela vison) from eastern Minnesota, 27% contained Dioctophyma renale, primarily in the right kidney. No significant difference between prevalence in adult male and immature male mink was found, nor between the prevalence in males vs. female mink. Thirteen worms were found in one male mink, representing the highest documented infection intensity of a single wild mink.

Animal Protection In A World Dominated By The World Trade Organization, Leesteffy Jenkins, Robert Stumberg

State of the Animals 2001

Animal issues are playing a crucial role in making the World Trade Organization (WTO), the international body responsible for initiating and enforcing global trade rules, publicly visible. Current WTO rules prohibit the types of enforcement mechanisms relied upon by sovereign nations to make animal protection initiatives effective; as a result, many animal protection measures in this country and abroad have been reversed or stymied in the face of WTO challenges or threatened challenges. The WTO’s adverse impact on animal protection is one of the reasons why the WTO’s new-found public image is increasingly a negative one.

Review Of Sacred Fireplace (Oceti Wakan): Life And Teachings Of A Lakota Medicine Man By Pete S. Catches Sr. Edited By Peter V. Catches, Daniel J. Gelo

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The late Oglala Lakota traditionalist Pete Catches or Petaga Yuha Mani (He Walks with Hot Coals) has left behind a memoir that is most noteworthy for what it doesn't offer. There is no sterile, technical inventory of ritual terms and formulae and very little that could be dismissed as New Age spiritualist bromide. Instead, there is a replication of oral reminiscences as they are customarily delivered by Indian elders-seemingly wandering associations that are, paradoxically, so efficient in generating memorable images in the listener's mind.

Catches's recollections of prosaic childhood teachings from the uncle who raised him (such as, "Always make …

Review Of Feels Like Far: A Rancher's Life On The Great Plains By Linda Hasselstrom, Nancy Zuercher

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Feels Like Far is a poignant autobiography. Linda Hasselstrom observes like a naturalist, contemplates like a philosopher, and writes like a poet as she pursues her central question: "Death washed away the solid bedrock of my life as I drove back and forth across the plains this year. ... Are these changes in my life vortical growth? Or the destructive confusion of a prairie twister ?" Flashbacks and reflections weave past and present together.

As she ponders her husband's death, her father's aging and death, her mother's decline, her best friend's death, her move from her ranch to Cheyenne, and …