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Book News- Fall 2001

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Book Notes

The Price of a Gift: A Lakota Healer's Story

Texas and New Mexico on the Eve of the Civil War: The Mansfield and Johnston Inspections, 1859-1861.

Frederick Manfred: A Daughter Remembers

Native American Weapons

Title And Contents- Fall 2001

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Great Plains Quarterly

Volume 21/ Number 4 / Fall 2001

Contents

FIVE VOICES ONE PLACE: AN INTRODUCTION Susan J. Rosowski and John R. Wunder

LAND, JUSTICE, AND ANGIE DEBO: TELLING THE TRUTH TO - AND ABOUT - YOUR NEIGHBORS Patricia Nelson Limerick

THE EARTH SAYS HAVE A PLACE: WILLIAM STAFFORD AND A PLACE OF LANGUAGE Thomas Fox Averill

"NO PLACE TO HIDE": WRIGHT MORRIS'S GREAT PLAINS Joseph J. Wydeven

FROM FEIKEMA TO MANFRED, FROM THE BIG SIOUX BASIN TO THE NORTHERN PLAINS Arthur R. Huseboe

"WE ANISHINAABEG ARE THE KEEPERS OF THE NAMES OF THE EARTH": LOUISE ERDRICH'S GREAT PLAINS …

Review Of The Limits Of Multiculturalism: Interrogating The Origins Of American Anthropology By Scott Michaelsen, Nathan E. Bender

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Multicultural perspectives in American anthropology are not new but have been present since its inception. Michaelsen examines the origins of North American anthropology as a scholarly discipline in the early to mid-nineteenth century and the participation in it of American Indian writers and scholars. This interesting circuit through the history of anthropology reviews much current research along the way. Rather than offering a final summary of the points of each chapter in order to make a concluding case for the "limits of multiculturalism," Michaelsen uses his first chapter to lay the theoretical groundwork for his arguments and then presents the …

Review Of Native American Art: The Collections Of The Ethnological Museum Berlin By Peter Bolz And Hans-Ulrich Sanner, Bruce Bernstein

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Written to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin (once known as the Museum fur Völkerkunde), Native American Art provides a broad sense of the exhibition and the museum's holdings. Its authors' stated intention is to answer the frequently asked question: "How have all the Indian things in the museum gotten there!" The catalog does so in a manner that illuminates and extends our understanding of the Berlin Museum, anthropology museums in general, and American Indian cultures.

The catalog's first chapter, "Indians and Germans: A Relationship Riddled With Clichés," discusses some of the stereotypes …

Review Of Some Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys: A Collection Of Articles And Essays By John R. Erickson, Michael C. Coleman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

"My interest in ranch life is probably genetic," writes Western author and ex-cowboy John R. Erickson. "My mother's people were Texas frontiersmen, ranchers, and cowboys back to 1858." Although the present reviewer grew up in Dublin (Ireland, not Texas), my interest is also genetic, as my movie-loving father filled me with stories of the West. He would have enjoyed Erickso1!'s little book, as did I.

The organization is thematic, with sections containing short essays and articles on people, place, climate (terrible!), animals, cowboys, ranch, rodeo, and tools (saddles and boots- in Catch Rope [1994] Erickson examined roping). While based heavily …

Review Of The Five Crows Ledger: Biographic Warrior Art Of The Flathead Indians By James D. Keyser, Candace Greene

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Publication of the Five Crows Ledger brings to light a new source of information for examining the complex and shifting boundaries of Plains Indian culture in the nineteenth century. This set of thirteen drawings clearly demonstrates that the Flathead, usually categorized as a Plateau people, participated heavily in the Plains war practice of counting coup and validating their personal exploits with lasting visual records.

These drawings, now in the collection of the Jesuit Missouri Province Archives in St. Louis, were collected by Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet in western Montana in the early 1840s. De Smet's annotations provide a rich body …

Review Of Repatriation Reader: Who Owns American Indian Remains? Edited By Devon A. Mihesuah, Julia D. Harrison

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In writing a review for Great Plains Quarterly one is asked to emphasize the book's Great Plains content. So while Devon Mihesuah's edited reader does not specifically mention particular Native peoples who lived on the Plains any more than it discusses others who lived outside the region, it is of direct relevance to anyone interested in the Great Plains, particularly anyone interested in the region's Native history and the contemporary lived reality of these populations. Issues of repatriation, reburial, looting, the effectiveness of the NAGPRA legislation, relationships among Native people, museums, archaeologists, and anthropologists are currently central to any such …

Review Of The Annotated Wizard Of Oz: Centennial Edition By L. Frank Baum, Michael O. Riley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Celebrations around the country last year honored the hundredth anniversary of the publication of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. His story of Dorothy, the young girl from "the great Kansas prairie," and her amazing adventures in the magical land of Oz is no more amazing than the book's transformation during its first century from simple children's tale into one of the most recognized and beloved American icons worldwide. A major event in that process was the publication in 1973 of Michael Patrick Hearn's Annotated Wizard of Oz, the first in-depth study of Baum's masterpiece. Modeled …

Review Of Set The Ploughshare Deep: A Prairie Memoir By Timothy Murphy, David R. Solheim

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Timothy Murphy is an accomplished poet who, in mature adulthood, recently began publishing collections of his work. Four titles are listed dating from 1996. From reading his prairie memoir, one gathers that Murphy used his earlier adult life to establish a level of financial stability before devoting more of his time to literary matters. Set the Plowshare Deep should please a range of readers. It documents three generations of a Red River Valley family, discussing them from two points of view (the book includes a section written by the author's father, Vincent Murphy). The slightly over-sized format and high quality …

Review Of Cowboys, Ranchers And The Cattle Business: Cross-Border Perspectives On Ranching History Edited By Simon Evans, Sarah Carter, And Bill Yeo, Paul Voisey

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This collection presents a selection of papers delivered at the Canadian Cowboy Conference held in Calgary, Alberta, in 1997 in conjunction with the Glenbow Museum's "Canadian Cowboy Exhibition." The subtitle indicates the main theme, but American readers should note that all of the authors focus on ranching north of the border, and particularly on southern Alberta. They present new research from that frontier and compare it to the existing literature in the United States. The main purpose of their efforts, however, is to challenge the traditional vision of Canadian ranching first articulated by Lewis G. Thomas and refined by such …

Review Of Another America: Native American Maps And The History Of Our Land By Mark Warhus, W. Raymond Wood

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This is the first book outlining the nature of Native American cartography and synthesizing that information with Native American history and world views. The geographical knowledge brought together in one individual Native American's mind and expressed in graphic form is not often appreciated, even by serious scholars. Warhus reminds us that a single map, prepared by the Blackfoot Indian chief Ak ko mok ki, provides a detailed picture of more than 200,000 square miles of western North America, and the map by the Arapaho Gero-Schunu-wy-ha the entirety of the Central and Northern Plains. These examples could be multiplied many times, …

Land, Justice, And Angie Debo Telling The Truth To-And About-Your Neighbors, Patricia Nelson Limerick

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

When Angie Debo was an old woman, she lived in her hometown of Marshall, Oklahoma, where she had warm and close ties with her neighbors. She also had a more geographically dispersed network: a list of several hundred people, scattered around the nation, whom she would mobilize to write senators and congressmen, or to the president, on behalf of particular campaigns for Indian rights. She sent the members of her network mimeographed letters and in urgent circumstances made phone calls to them. She got her network geared up to write in support of Alaskan Native land claims, an enlargement of …

Five Voices One Place An Introduction, Susan J. Rosowski, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The essays gathered together in this issue of Great Plains Quarterly constitute "Five Voices One Place," the 25th annual symposium of the Center for Great Plains Studies. This was a symposium designed to complement the initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to establish a regional humanities center in the Plains (to be called the Plains Humanities Alliance). Appropriately, the symposium program reflected populist traditions fundamental to the Great Plains. That is, each of the five state humanities councils in the region (defined for this initiative as Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota) selected a writer …

News And Notes

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

Contents:
Errata
Conference

Review Of Sex In The Heartland By Beth Bailey, Julia Ehrhardt

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

In her thorough analysis of six separate but interconnected historical episodes that signpost the "sexual revolution" in the university town of Lawrence, Kansas, from 1945 to 1975, Beth Bailey strives to identify the complicated factors that changed sex for good in America during the postwar period. Bailey argues that the sexual revolution has been erroneously characterized as a rapid transformation of sexual ideology that occurred first in large cities and then spread to smaller towns. Instead, the author claims that the "revolution" was actually a gradual re-evaluation of sexual mores influenced by government policies, the mass market, popular culture, technology, …

The Contemporary Role Of The Federal Government In The Great Plains Economy: A Comprehensive Examination Of Federal Spending And Related Fiscal Activities, Sam Cordes, Evert Van Der Sluis

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

The Great Plains economy is influenced much more by federal spending and taxation than is the nation as a whole. Results were generated from analyzing federal fiscal activities at three different levels: a state-by-state analysis, an analysis of the 478-county region, and an analysis by county category for two Great Plains states (Nebraska and South Dakota). In several Great Plains states, federal spending represents well in excess of 25% of the state's economic activity. Federal spending, especially farm program payments, are of particular significance to nonmetropolitan counties in the Great Plains. This level of federal dependency, coupled with recent and …

Review Of Communities Perennial Weeds: Characteristics And Identification Of Selected Herbaceous Species By Wood Powell Anderson, Stephan L. Hatch

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

This illustrated text focuses on the characteristics and identification of twenty-eight selected herbaceous weed species. (Its author is silent about his criteria for including specific taxa.) The book's objectives, poorly stated, are to present knowledge on the identification of weeds, their propagation, and how propagation characteristics influence weed control efforts. The book explains the principles of weed control using a small sample of species and then leaves the reader to determine how these principles apply to the hundreds of other weeds in the United States. Satisfactory as a supplemental text in an introductory weeds course, it treats only a small …

Review Of Women In Ancient America By Karen Olsen Bruhns And Karen E. Stothert, Marcel Kornfeld

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

It is well known that the role and contribution of women to prehistory has long been ignored or undervalued. Because women represent approximately one half of humanity, have done so in the past, and make a contribution by sheer numbers alone, this book is a necessary attempt to remedy the shortcomings in the writing of American prehistory as it pertains to women and gender. The authors state in its preface that their book is "an introduction to the study of women in the American past."

The first chapter lays out the method for the study of women and gender in …

Review Of Communities, Development And Sustainability Across Canada Edited By John T. Pierce And Ann Dale, Neil Gilson

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

Communities, Development and Sustainability Across Canada is intended to serve as a synthesis of work on how Canadian communities can achieve sustainable development. Twelve essays by different authors discuss diverse theoretical and analytical perspectives and promote a variety of actions related to implementing sustainable development at the community level. The editors' introduction promises that the book will "highlight the importance of community as a critical link in achieving sustainable development." To this end, contributors were instructed to provide readers with both "retrospective and prospective analyses" and to make concrete proposals for action. Individual authors responded by producing work that consistently …

Review Of Policy Reform In American Agriculture: Analysis And Prognosis By David Orden, Robert Paarlberg, And Terry Roe, Thomas F. Stinson

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

Another farm policy debate is underway, and those who plan on participating, or even watching closely from the sidelines, would be well advised to read Policy Reform in American Agriculture. The authors make clear that what is at issue goes well beyond whether the 1996 farm bill's decoupled payment system (where the amount farmers receive is independent of the market price for their crops) is jettisoned or not. Indeed, decisions on how to construct a new safety net may be as important to the long-run outlook for US agriculture as the level at which it is set.

Orden, Paarlberg, …

Characteristics Of In-Migrants To The Northern Great Plains: Survey Results From Nebraska And North Dakota, F. Larry Leistritz, Sam Cordes, Randall Sell, John C. Allen Iii, Rebecca Vogt

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

Recent employment growth in the northern Great Plains may be stimulating increased in-migration. This study, expanding on our initial report (Leistritz et al. 2000), seeks to identify the salient characteristics of recent in-migrants to Nebraska and North Dakota, using data from mailed surveys conducted in Nebraska in 1996 and North Dakota in 1997. The survey respondents were generally younger than the populations of Nebraska and North Dakota overall; about 60% were between 21 and 40 years old. The educational level of the migrants was also higher than that of the states' populations overall-45% of the new residents were college graduates …

Annual Index

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

Annual Index

Review Of Pigs, Profits, And Rural Communities Edited By Kendall M. Thu And E. Paul Durrenberger, Mark S. Honeyman

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

These are historic times of rapid change in US agriculture, particularly the swine production industry. Rapid change creates controversy. Controversy surrounding the industrialization of the US swine industry is often over-simplified as a two-sided debate. In Pigs, Profits, and Rural Communities, editors Kendall Thu and Paul Durrenberger-anthropologists-effectively gather and present the multi-dimensional depth and breadth of the profoundly rapid change in the swine industry with a collection of eleven perspectives plus their own introductory comments.

A Phenomenological Case For The Family Farmer As An Environmental Steward, Jim Hanson

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

This phenomenological analysis concludes that the American family farmer is a steward of the environment in a way that the corporate farmer is not. As a study of consciousness, phenomenology recognizes that family farmers have more sensitive and less selective experience because of living in the farm environment. It draws from the first-hand accounts articulated by family farmers-accounts that reflect their firsthand and direct experiences of the farm environment. Although considered to be irrelevant by many scientists and statisticians, phenomenological accounts of direct experience are important starting points for the scientific study of farmers and their knowledge of environmental problems.

Review Of Alien Species In North America And Hawaii: Impacts On Natural Ecosystems By George W. Cox, Roger Sheley

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

This enthusiastic conservationist chronicles the arrival and expansion of many keystone non-indigenous species into North America and Hawaii. A wealth of knowledge is pulled together to provide an overview of the impacts of invasive plants and animals on regional ecosystems. Alien Species should be required reading for natural resource managers.

The author provides regional, biotic, theoretical, and policy perspectives on invasive species and discusses key invasive plants and animals and their known impacts within ten regions. This is the most extensive and documented part of the volume and provides powerful testimony regarding the magnitude of the problem.

Review Of The U.S. Army And The Texas Frontier Economy, 1845-1900 By Thomas T. Smith, Andres Tijerina

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

While historians have richly documented Texas's economic growth through its cattle industry and the petrochemical industry, they have paid scarce attention to the US government's major role in that growth as a result of its infusion of capital through the US Army in Texas. According to Thomas T. Smith, the Army channeled its budget from the US Treasury through quartermaster contracts into the hands of civilian vendors, creating an "exponential benefit" for the rest of the frontier community as a consequence of the multiplier effect of the market. Thus, the US Army decisively supported and conditioned the civilian frontier economy …

Frontmatter

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

Frontmatter

Influence Of Habitat On Distribution And Abundance Of The Eastern Woodrat In Kansas, Jon P. Beckmann, Glennis A. Kaufman, Donald W. Kaufman

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

Anthropogenic modification of native woodlands and grasslands in the Great Plains has altered the abundance and distribution of many species of mammals. To study habitat effects on the eastern woodrat (Neotoma floridana), we surveyed nests of the eastern woodrat in woodlands, grasslands, and croplands along 77 km of secondary roads in three counties in north-central Kansas. All nests were located in woodlands ( < 2 %of habitat), although grasslands and croplands constituted 36% and 62% of habitat surveyed, respectively. In our survey, nests were associated positively with shelterbelts (3.6 nests per 100 m of road edge) but not with shrub patches (1.1 nests per 100 m of road edge) or riparian woodlands (0.3 nests per 100 m of road edge). Consequently, we specifically censused nests in an additional 12 riparian woodlands and 12 shelterbelts. Nests of eastern woodrats were less dense in riparian woodlands (9.4 nests/ha) than in shelterbelts (55.5 nests/ha). Density of woodrat nests decreased as width of a wooded area increased. Further, nests per 100 m of length of woodland did not increase as the width of woodland increased. These patterns suggest that woodland edge, not woodland interior, is the primary factor in abundance of eastern woodrats in this region. Although the eastern woodrat has previously been considered a woodland species, our results suggest that this assessment is incorrect. Our observations demonstrate that anthropogenic modification of the Great Plains, in the form of planted shelterbelts and expanded riparian woodland, likely has increased the distribution and abundance of eastern woodrats, compared to the mid-1800s.

Review Of North America: A Geographical Mosaic Edited By Frederick W. Boal And Stephen A. Royle, William C. Johnson

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

Boal and Royle, geographers from Belfast's Queen's University, have assembled a volume consisting of twenty-four individually authored chapters (essays) organized into seven sections. Section A, an introduction by the editors, relates the geologic process of continental drift (collision) and accretion to social processes involved in the cultural history of North America. This enterprising chapter neatly sets the stage for the ensuing sections and chapters. “The Physical and Biotic Milieux” (Section B) consists of three chapters focusing on physiography and earth surface processes, weather and climate, and the relationship of culture to environment. The first of these chapters is a bit …

Social Values In The Assessment Of Livestock Grazing In The Great Plains, R. K. Heitschmidt, J. D. Johnson, K. D. Klement

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

We examined the sustainability of the livestock grazing industry in the Great Plains of North America relative to ecological processes, economic viability, and social acceptance. We conclude from the review that livestock grazing is an appropriate use of Great Plains grasslands and, when properly managed, ecologically sustainable. However, we also present evidence that the Great Plains grazing industry is not always economically sustainable or socially acceptable. We attribute this anomaly in large part to the consuming public's general lack of understanding and appreciation for the ecological linkages between current livestock grazing tactics and the evolutionary history of the Great Plains. …