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Review Of Prairie University: A History Of The University Of Nebraska By Robert E. Knoll, Paul F. Sharp

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Institutional histories are often dull and lifeless- but not this one. From its preface to its final chapter celebrating the university's 125th year, this impressive history of the University of Nebraska entertains with colorful vignettes of its facuity, staff, and administrative leaders. With candor, curmudgeons are called curmudgeons, the less than able are identified, and the irascible remain irascible in the story's able telling.

Students of higher education will find this a rich study. Nebraska alumni will respond to its anecdotes with vivid memories, and many readers will enjoy the lively, sometimes opinionated analyses. All will find it a detailed …

Frompin' In The Great Plains Listening And Dancing To The Jazz Orchestras Of Alphonso Trent 1925~44, Marc Rice

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This paper focuses on one of the most popular and influential of the territory band leaders, Alphonso Trent. From 1925 to the mid 1940s, his groups were acknowledged by listeners and by other musicians as among the very best of the jazz bands performing in the Southwest and Great Plains. In the cities and towns that they visited, their performances were always a special event, particularly in the African American communities. Trent's orchestras played an important role as musicians and entertainers of African Americans in the Great Plains States in the 1920s and 1930s.

Review Of Cowgirls Of The Rodeo: Professional Athletes By Mary Lou Lecompte, Joan Wells

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This book sets out to describe the lives and achievements of women wild west show and rodeo contestants from 1896 to 1992. Offspring of their culture, these cowgirls exhibited athleticism, ranching skills, competitive spirit, and perseverance. Historical chapters relate the quest of rodeo women to compete as equals in the exhibition of their athletic ability.

Early promoters recognized and supported the appearance of women in the sport of rodeo, admitting that their glamour, costuming, and skilled performances were necessary in selling rodeo as family entertainment. Cowgirls like Tad Lucas, Alice and Maggie Greenough, Lucille Mulhall, Florence Randolph, Mabel Strickland, Ruth …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

THE LEFT AND LABOR ON THE PLAINS: AN INTRODUCTION (Frances W. Kaye)

WORKERS, UNIONS, AND HISTORIANS ON THE NORTHERN PLAINS (William C. Pratt)

"WHO'S GOING TO DANCE WITH SOMEBODY WHO CALLS YOU A MAIN STREETER": COMMUNISM, CULTURE AND COMMUNITY IN SHERIDAN COUNTY, MONTANA, 1918-1934 (Gerald Zahavi)

REVIEW ESSAY

Ric Burns. The Way West: Episode I, Westward, the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1845-1864; Episode II, The Approach of Civilization, 1865-1869; Episode III, The War for the Black Hills, 1870-1876; Episode IV, Ghost Dance, 1877-1893. (Martin Blythe; Mia Graeffe; Sanna Heinsalo; Ossi Heinanen; Ari Helo; Kari Hirvinen; Piia Kiviniemi; Vello …

Review Of Along Ancient Trails: The Mallet Expedition Of 1739 By Donald J. Blakeslee, James P. Ronda

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In the popular mind the names Pierre and Paul Mallet carry little or no weight. Coronado, de Soto, Champlain, and Lewis and Clark occupy our imaginative space, crowding out adventurers like the Mallets. Even scholars have paid scant attention to the Mallets' epic journey from the Missouri River to Santa Fe in 1739. Donald J. Blakeslee's Along Ancient Trails sets the record straight, properly noting the Mallet role in the European exploration of the southern Great Plains. In doing so, Blakeslee not only recounts one expedition but illuminates the complex history of the entire region.

Prelude To Brownsville The Twenty~Fifth Infantry At Fort Niobrara, Nebraska, 1902~06, Thomas R. Buecker

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Around midnight on 13 August 1906, gunshots suddenly rang out on the deserted streets of Brownsville, Texas. Unknown parties indiscriminately fired at a number of private residences, severely wounding a police officer, and into a nearby saloon, killing a bartender and slightly wounding a patron. Apparently all victims were Hispanics. When the ten-minute fusillade was over, witnesses claimed black soldiers from the Twenty-fifth Infantry stationed at adjacent Fort Brown were responsible for the outrage. Substantiation for their accusations seemingly came when civil and military authorities discovered expended military cartridges at the scene.

The Brownsville citizenry had not been happy when …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE GREAT PLAINS: AN INTRODUCTION (Keith D. Parker)

THE GREAT PLAINS SIT-IN MOVEMENT, 1958-60 (Ronald Walters)

PRELUDE TO BROWNSVILLE: THE TWENTY-FIFTH INFANTRY AT FORT NIOBRARA, NEBRASKA, 1902-06 (Thomas R. Buecker)

FROMPIN' IN THE GREAT PLAINS: LISTENING AND DANCING TO THE JAZZ ORCHESTRAS OF ALPHONSO TRENT, 1925-44 (Marc Rice)

"WITH ONE MIGHTY PULL": INTERRACIAL TOWN BOOSTING IN NICODEMUS, KANSAS (Claire O'Brien)

BOOK REVIEWS

Talking Up a Storm: Voices of the New West

Girl on a Pony

Tough Daisies: Kansas Humor from "The Lane County Bachelor" to Bob Dole

Faded Dreams: More Ghost Towns of Kansas

Indians and the …

Review Of Tough Daisies: Kansas Humor From "The Lane County Bachelor" To Bob Dole By C. Robert Haywood, William Kloefkorn

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Haywood calls Tough Daisies "a sampler" intended to illustrate that Kansans, contrary to a long litany of misconceptions, "have always had a sense of humor." He succeeds splendidly, chiefly because he gives the reader dozens of well-selected jokes, anecdotes, poems, and cartoons, and partly because the author himself has a wry sense of humor, one that wears well and unobtrusively complements his material. I finished the book wanting more-more jokes, more stories, more history, more Haywood.

Review Of Faded Dreams: More Ghost Towns Of Kansas By Daniel C. Fitzgerald, James R. Shortridge

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Kansas State Historical Society maintains a file on about six thousand failed towns in the state, a figure large almost beyond comprehension in this modern age of one town per county. Dan Fitzgerald helps to put urban development in proper perspective by offering thumb-nail sketches of one hundred and six of these nearly forgotten communities. It is history from the grass roots, well done, and written in an unpretentious style that should appeal to scholarly and general audiences alike. The sketches range in length from one to seven pages, usually accompanied by an old photograph or plat map, and …

The Frontier Medical Community Of Leavenworth, Kansas, Charles R. King M.D.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

One of the important elements in the development of a North American frontier community was a system of medical care. During the nineteenth century the work of all frontier professionals was dramatically facilitated by new means of transportation and communication. Mid-century frontier communities had direct contact with urban centers via the telegraph and could acquire supplies over railroads and improved roadways. The development of a medical care system in Leavenworth, Kansas, during the second half of the nineteenth century illustrates the important role that physicians and other health providers played in community building on the western frontier, as well as …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

SACRAMENTAL LANGUAGE: RITUAL IN THE POETRY OF LOUISE ERDRICH (P. Jane Hafen)

THE FRONTIER MEDICAL COMMUNITY OF LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS (Charles R. King)

WILLIAM McKINLEY HOLT AND THE INDIAN CLAIMS COMMISSION (Francis Moul)

THE MISSOURI RIVER BASIN ON THE 1795 SOULARD MAP: A CARTOGRAPHIC LANDMARK (W. Raymond Wood)

REVIEW ESSAYS

Stephan E. Ambrose. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (John L. Allen; Clara Sue Kidwell; Donald Worster)

BOOK REVIEWS

The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains

The Amazing Death of Calf Shirt and Other Blackfoot Stories

Stephen Long and American Frontier …

Review Of Education For Extinction: American Indians And The Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 By David Wallace Adams, Rebecca Dobkins

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Adams makes a number of important contributions, including raising several significant topics deserving further investigation: the local consequences of tension between centralization and decentralization in the boarding school system, the connections between the movement for compulsory education for Indians and for the U.S. school-age public at large, and the relationship between the schools' project of Indian assimilation and American nationalism of the time, particularly the drive to make citizens out of the immigrant "melting pot." In addition, Adams's research, building upon that of many other scholars, demonstrates that the Indian boarding school experience offers rich ethnographic and historical material for …

Marl Sandoz's Slogum House Greed As Woman, Glenda Riley

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In her 1937 novel, Slogum House, Mari Sandoz turned the usual stereotype of greed and cupidity on its head. Instead of presenting a voracious male rancher aggrandizing his land holdings to the detriment of hard-working homesteaders, Sandoz created Regula Haber Slogum, a grasping woman who eventually owns nearly an entire county, which she has managed to have named after her family. Although Gulla, as she is known, controls most of Slogum County, she continues brutally to foreclose mortgages and force sheriffs' sales, even during the depression years of the 1930s.

Despite this depiction of what Katharine Mason has called …

Review Of The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities In The Modern West By Carl Abbott, Robert B. Fairbanks

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This important book initiates a new series on The Modern American West edited by Gerald D. Nash. In it the author not only documents the critical role cities have played in the development of the West since World War II, but claims that those cities really personify the three mythic images of the West as locus of democracy, opportunity, and individual fulfillment. Defining the West as all of the Great Plains and Pacific States, Carl Abbott examines mid-size cities as well as large, but concentrates on the impact of metropolises like Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston …

Review Of A Dose Of Frontier Soldiering: The Memoirs Of Corporal E. A. Bode, Frontier Regular Infantry, 1877-1882 Edited By Thomas T. Smith, Markku Henriksson

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

For anyone interested in the "big picture" of what happened in the American West ten or fifteen years after the Civil War, Bode's memoirs will prove disappointing: he was not involved in any of the major campaigns in any meaningful way and reveals nothing not already known. If one is interested in a soldier's-although an exceptional one'sviews of some of his superior officers, or Indians, or mostly about the daily duties of an infantryman, Bode offers a good dose of "frontier soldiering." There is also useful primary material here on the 1870s and the social history of the military. Although …

Review Of "That Man Partridge": E. A. Partridge, His Thoughts And Times By Murray Knuttila, Mary Higginbotham

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Effectively demonstrating the interconnections between biography and history, Murray Knuttila introduces readers to E. A. Partridge, who played a pivotal role in the development of agrarian society, economy, and politics in Canada's prairie provinces during the early twentieth century. Edward Alexander Partridge, writes Knuttila, "was part of an historic transformation of an entire region through settlement and then what might be called 'unsettlement'" (p. 85). Knuttila focuses on Partridge's life during the tumultuous decades between 1900 and 1930, exploring how Partridge both affected and was affected by his historical context.

Review Of Dangerous Passage: The Santa Fe Trail And The Mexican War By William Y. Chalfant, Duane A. Smith

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

William Chalfant, long time western historian and Hutchinson, Kansas, attorney, focuses on one period in the trail's history, the Mexican War phase of American "Manifest Destiny." His is the story of the military as it protects the trail and uses it as the invasion corridor to march to Santa Fe. The main story details the "troubled and often violent IndianWhite relations that plagued the trail during the war years" (p.xiii). Marc Simmons's foreword sets the scene and takes the reader into the narrative.

A wide variety of people will enjoy this study-those interested in military, Indian, transportation, and southwestern history …

Review Of We Are A People In This World: The Lakota Sioux And The Massacre At Wounded Knee By Conger Beasley, Jr, Joe Starita

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

To tell the group's story, Beasley has employed a kind of literary double helix-juxtaposing chapters which alternately flash back to summarize the massacre of 1890, then flash forward to chronicle the memorial ride of 1990. Occasionally tedious, the device fulfills one vital function: it provides a superb context while poignantly illuminating similarities between two events separated by a century. Beasley, a poet, is often at his best describing the almost unimaginable cold (temperatures of 40 below, wind chills approaching 80 below) endured by the group.

Review Of Roadside History Of South Dakota By Linda Hasselstrom, Charles Vollan

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

A decidedly non-traditional history, the work is organized into a series of short essays arranged geographically. Hasselstrom first details the history of a region, from before human occupation to the present, noting its general characteristics and its social and political tendencies. She does the same for each town and its local celebrities, successfully balancing a love of the past with an appreciation of the present. She does not limit herself to the South Dakota of the last half of the nineteenth century, but reaches for the entirety of the region's past, from Paleo-Indians to contemporary ranchers. What results is an …

Review Of From Columbus To Conagra: The Globalization Of Agriculture And Food, Edited By Allessandro Bonanno, Lawrence Busch, William Frieland, Lourdes Gouveia, And Enzo Mingione, R. Douglas Hurt

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

Despite differing definitions, most scholars agree that the late twentieth century is an age of globalization in agriculture and the food industry. For some, globalization means the elimination of trade barriers; for others it involves the development of international relationships in production and distribution. Globalization, however, is exemplified for all by transnational corporations (TNCs), such as ConAgra, that own and control a variety of world-wide production and distribution systems, thereby controlling millions of workers, manipulating governments, and changing consumption patterns. In contrast to corporations of the past, TNCs essentially exist independently of nation states. Although national and international laws provide …

Review Of Meatpackers And Beef Barons: Company Town In A Global Economy By Carol Andreas, Laura Lacasa

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

Lamenting the exploitation of meatpackers at the hands of America's multi-billion dollar beef industry, sociologist Carol Andreas presents a case study of ConAgra, Inc.'s operations in Greeley, Colorado. Andreas asserts that large companies purposely exploit labor to survive in a highly competitive global market. Accordingly, she argues that the u.s. meatpacking industry, epitomized by ConAgra's operations, represents a flawed economic system that fails to offer advantages either to blue-collar workers or their communities.

Review Of Economic Adaptation: Alternatives For Nonmetropolitan Areas By David L. Barkley, Richard L. Meile

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

The purpose of David L. Barkley's edited work is to examine critically the policy and practice of rural economic development in the United States during the last quarter century. To that end Barkley has brought together leading economists, regional scientists, and several sociologists to review and evaluate the current status of rural economic development.

Many of the contributors to the volume, especially Professors Lobao and Summers, allude to the significance of a globalized economy to development in non-metropolitan areas of the country. The volume shows, to paraphrase Lobao, that strategies focusing on recapitalizing rural communities do not work everywhere or …

Review Of Alberta's Local Governments: Politics And Democracy By Jack Masson, Louis A. Knafla

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

The authors, of the University of Alberta, have presented here a lengthy examination of democracy and political practice in the province's rural and urban communities, essentially from the 1880s to 1994. In addition to the communities themselves, the authors also examine the relations between municipalities and the provincial government, the growth of greater local self-government, representation and accountability, the territorial decentralization of municipal economic activity, and the recent transfer of the costs of local government from the province to municipalities.

Review Of Interest Group Politics In The Midwestern States By Ronald J. Hrebenar And Clive S. Thomas, Russell Ross

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

This interesting collection of studies considers as "Midwestern" the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Its nineteen contributors, authorities in state politics and government, achieve an overall consistency among their chapters by adhering to the editors' outline of the volume's subject matter. Although published in 1994, much of the book's research was done in the 1980s.

Review Of Roadside History Of South Dakota By Linda Hasselstrom, Darrell Napton

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

The best parts of this book are the introductions to South Dakota and to each of the four regions into which Hasselstrom divides the state. In these sixty pages, she distills the state's history and cultural geography. Linda Hasselstrom is one of South Dakota's most accomplished native writers. Her writing is clean and easy to read. She explains what it is to be South Dakotan as only a native could, but retains the ability to step back and see the state objectively.

Intended for an audience of armchair travelers, vacationers, and casual history buffs, the book is organized around four …

Review Of Apache Mothers And Daughters: Four Generations Of A Family By Ruth Mcdonald Boyer And Narcissus Duffy Gayton, Beth Ritter

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

Apache Mothers and Daughters is the narrative saga of four generations of Chiricahua Apache mothers and daughters. Against a poignant background of Chiricahua raiding and warfare, imprisonment, relocation, reservation confinement, and forced acculturation, this intensely personal history of four remarkable women's lives unfolds. The book's strength lies in its masterful weaving of solid ethnohistoric research with the oral history provided by Narcissus Duffy Gayton (and other informants) about herself, her mother Christine Kozine, her grandmother Beshad-e, and her great grandmother Dilth-c1eyhen.

Nebraska Quilts, 1870-1989: Perspectives On Traditions And Change, Patricia Cox Crews, Wendelin Rich

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

This study of Nebraska-made quilts spans the years from the 1870s through the 1980s, which extends from the early settlement of the state through the recent farm crisis. The descriptive profile of Nebraska quilts that emerged highlights the many similarities of Nebraska-made quilts to other American quilts of the same periods. Analysis shows that Nebraska quilts reflected the technological, artistic, and social trends of the times and points to changes in popularity of quilt types and pieced and applique patterns over the years. Although distinctive quilt types, styles, and quilting practices were reported in other states, Nebraska quilts are notable …

What Kind Of Woman Would Work In Meatpacking, Anyway? World War Ii And The Road To Fair Employment, Deborah Fink

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

World War II accelerated the movement of rural and small town Iowa women into manufacturing industry. Scholars have debated the significance of World War II for gender relations, but the recent consensus is that only focused studies of particular localities can address the complexity of the changes effected by the War. This study looks at Iowa women in meatpacking plants. Assessing the economic background, their prior efforts to enter packing plants, and the resistance they met in the plants makes their limited gains understandable. Women of rural and small town wage earning households had always been workers, usually in the …

Secondary School Curriculum Change In Rural Nebraska, Erwin Goldenstein, L. James Walter

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

Critics of education in the United States asserted that high school students' performance fell after 1960. The decline has been linked to high school curricula which lost academic rigor in comparison to high school curricula in earlier decades. This study investigates the curricula of selected high schools in Nebraska, using random samples of graduating seniors taken every 10 years from 1953 to 1983. Findings show that the proportions of students' programs devoted to more demanding English, social sciences, mathematics, business, and natural science courses diminished during the study period. Grade inflation was observed in smaller public schools, but not in …

Multivariate Analysis Of Quality Of Life And Migration In North Dakota, Mohammad Hemmasi

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

Principle components analysis and multiple regression were used to examine spatial variations in quality of life indicators, and relationships between quality of life indicators and net migration rates for North Dakota counties between 1980 and 1990. Three quality of life dimensions were identified: Affluence, Suffering, and Demography. Of the three derived indicators, Affluence was the best overall statistical determinant of county migration rates. Adverse quality of life and migration trends were especially evident for counties with high non-white population proportions; such counties may need special development policies.