Other International and Area Studies Commons^™

Hunt, Capture, Raise, Increase The People Who Saved The Bison, Ken Zontek

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Charles and Mollie Goodnight, C. J. "Buffalo" Jones, Frederick and Mary Dupuis, and Samuel Walking Coyote and his wife Sabine saved the bison. They hunted, caught, and raised bison calves that increased buffalo numbers at a time when the Great Plains monarchs clung desperately to a tenuous existence. Their remarkable stories, deserving of reiteration, cast light on four themes of Western history: proper recognition for front-line conservationists, the role of women, hunters as conservationists, and the profitability of species preservation.

Western bison conservation was not a matter of eastern politicians and scientists, such as Theodore Roosevelt and William Hornaday, legislating …

Review Of The Persistence Of Ethnicity: Dutch Calvinist Pioneers In Amsterdam, Montana By Rob Kroes, Frederick C. Luebke

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Persistence of Ethnicity is not just another digest of desiccated social data but an engaging account, exceptionally well written, that probes the role of religion in the maintenance of ethnicity in the American West. Atypical perhaps in the small size and isolated location of the area of its focus, this case study is all the more valuable because these very characteristics (combined with the availability of excellent sources) allow Kroes to explore and test his ideas with ease.

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

CALLS FOR PAPERS

NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS HISTORY CONFERENCE

GABRIELLE ROY INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

WESTERN HISTORY ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE

GREAT PLAINS POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION AND AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE

CONFERENCE ON REGIONALISM IN CANADIAN AND AMERICAN WRITING

COMPARATIVE FRONTIER STUDIES SYMPOSIUM

Bison Ecology, Brule And Yankton Winter Hunting, And The Starving Winter Of 1832--33, Richmond Clow

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

On 6 February 1833, William Laidlow, the American Fur Company's leading official at Fort Pierre wrote that Brule (Sicangu) and Yankton (Ihanktonwan ) camps "have been in a state of starvation all winter, and have suffered most dreadfully." The entire winter of 1832-33 was a "starving time" on the middle Missouri River in present day south-central South Dakota because these skilled tribal hunters found no bison in a land where the herds were frequently described as "immense." Why knowledgeable and efficient professional tribal hunters, as well as post employees, were hungry that winter, in this apparent land of abundance, presents …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

FREDERICK C. LUEBKE AWARD (David Murphy; Don D. Walker; Doreen Barrie; Howard R. Lamar; David Wishart)

CALLS FOR PAPERS

JOINT CONFERENCE

Review Of The Northern Pacific Railroad And The Selling Of The West: A Nineteenth-Century Public Relations Venture By Sig Mickelson, William L. Lang

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

More troubling, though, are the author's misconceptions about the territory through which the Northern Pacific built its line. The author's evaluation that in 1870 there was "nothing in Montana east of the Belt Mountains" will surprise Montana historians, but his statement that "Idaho and eastern Washington were almost devoid of population" will dumbfound anyone who knows the history of WaHa Walla and Lewiston.

For readers who are curious about the Northern Pacific's land policies, Mickelson's book is a starting point, but there are numerous other, more modern treatments that are thorough and reliable.

Review Of Main Street In Crisis: The Great Depression And The Old Middle Class On The Northern Plains By Catherine Mcn Icol Stock, Thomas D. Isern

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The analysis in this book rests on the contention that by the time of the Great Depression there existed on the northern Plains a broad commonality of culture and interest that may be termed "the old middle class." The old middle class was a petty-producer class comprising both town and country. It espoused such values as hard work, egalitarianism, and community service, enforcing them through community organizations and public ritual. When a new middle class, the bureaucrats of the New Deal, proposed fundamental reforms in the society and economy of the Plains, they found Dakotans receptive to aid-of course, given …

Review Of Nebraskaland Magazine's The Cellars Of Time: Paleontology And Archaeology In Nebraska Vol. 72 No.1; January/February 1994. Lincoln: Nebraska Game And Parks Commission, Luann Wandsnider

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Nebraska is blessed with amazing and bountiful, and often unheralded, fossil and artifact resources. No Great Plains library is complete without this volume, which does a wonderful job of proclaiming this rich heritage. For Nebraska archaeology, it represents the only current source that is accessible and engaging. Students of paleontology will be similarly entranced and enlightened. NEBRASKAland and Nebraska History are to be congratulated.

Review Of Following The Indian Wars: The Story Of The Newspaper Correspondents Among The Indian Campaigners By Oliver Knight, Todd Kerstetter

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Despite these criticisms, Knight's work has value. It offers insights into the daily rigors of nineteenth-century Army life and examines the sources from which much public knowledge of Indians flowed. Fans of military history may enjoy the book and may join the correspondents' armchair generalling, but readers interested in the correspondents and the history of journalism will have to wade through a lot of extraneous material to get what they want.

Sense Of Place In The Prairie Environment Settlement And Ecology In Rural Geary County, Kansas, Nina Veregge

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Many people who drive across Kansas on the Interstate or on Route 50 see the state as a single, unchanging stretch of treeless plain. A more perceptive observer witnesses the gradual transition from the east to the west: from rolling hills and wooded vales to wide open grassland and sage plain; from corn to winter wheat; from farms to ranches and feedlots; from running streams to dry washes; from humidity on a summer day that is relieved only by constant wind to dry heat blown across grassland untempered by stream valley microclimates. It appears a seamless transition where distinctions are …

Review Of The Life And Legacy Of Annie Oakley By Glenda Riley, Donald Arthur Clark

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Riley proves an excellent writer, adeptly disclosing the personality of this private woman. Poverty ridden as a child, Oakley learned to hunt and became an expert markswoman. She married the first man she beat in a shooting competition, Frank Butler. Frank, perhaps the ideal husband, managed Annie and their engagements with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Throughout the years they maintained high moral standards; neither smoked, drank or cursed. Annie, ever the Victorian lady, always wore a dress and always rode side-saddle while proving herself a worldclass sharpshooter. She never forgot those less fortunate than herself, providing gifts to orphanages …

The Progressive Context Of The Nebraska Capitol The Collaboration Of Goodhue And Tack, Frederick C. Luebke

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Augustus Vincent Tack (1870-1949) was the first of eight artists who executed murals in the Nebraska state capitol. His involvement began in fall 1923, when he was asked by the architect, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (1869- 1924), to plan a program of mural decorations for the governor's suite of offices, located in the first part of the capitol to be completed. His murals were installed four years later, and the rooms were opened to the public on 1 January 1928. Tack's work was thus conceived, executed, and installed several years before the construction of the capitol was completed in 1932. At …

Review Of An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession Of The Nebraska Indians By David J. Wishart, Francis Paul Prucha

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This is a well-written and authoritative book, but it is not a pleasant book to read, for it is a story of unremitting sadness. It traces the nineteenth-century history of four Indian tribes whose homelands in 1800 covered what is now the eastern two-thirds of the state of Nebraska-the Omahas and the Otoe-Missourias along the Missouri River, the Pone as north of the Niobrara River near its mouth, and the Pawnees (in four bands) in the central area of the state.

Review Of Where The Sky Began: Land Of The Tallgrass Prairie By John Madson, Mikko Saikku

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Appendices include a useful list of prairie nurseries and seed sources and a directory of representative tallgrass prairies. Although the directory is by no means intended to be comprehensive, one can still complain about the omission of sites such as the Rockefeller Experimental Tract near Lawrence, Kansas. Where the Sky Began, possibly supplemented by a localized and biologically more detailed study (e.g., O. J. Reichman's Konza Prairie: A Tallgrass Natural History), will give the general reader a highly enjoyable introduction to the history and biota of the tallgrass prairie.

Breaking The Silence Hymns And Folk Songs In O. E. Rølvaag's Immigrant Trilogy, Phillip R. Coleman-Hull

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In an essay written in 1933 Einar Haugen briefly mentions that "RØlvaag's most delicate observations take the form of music, and rhythmic sound becomes to him the highest form of beauty." Haugen refers merely to the sonorous qualities of the prairie and never delves into the songs-both Norwegian folk songs and hymns-that surface through O. E. RØlvaag's immigrant trilogy. Since 1933, critics have explored a multitude of themes related to Giants in the Earth, Peder Victorious, and Their Father's God, and much attention has been given to the issue of cultural integrity as espoused by RØlvaag. Language, religion, and folklore …

Review Of Owning Western History: A Guide To Collecting Rare Documents, Historical Letters, And Valuable Photographs From The Old West By Warren B. Anderson, Warren W. Caldwell

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

As the reader will have surmised, this volume is about collecting. It might well have been titled, "Western History: Via Waste Paper, Photographs and Other Ephemera." Be warned, it is not concerned with literary debris, but rather the remains of defunct stock companies, failed businesses, "wanted posters," and seemingly an infinity of other secular paper.

There is little to review here. The book is unabashedly descriptive, anecdotal, and largely non-critical. None the less, it has the virtue of directing the scholar to many documents of "western" society that otherwise might be neglected, and the pay-off can be interesting.

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

GRASSLANDS: AN INTRODUCTION (Kathleen H. Keeler)

BLUESTEM AND TUSSOCK: FIRE AND PASTORALISM IN THE FLINT HILLS OF KANSAS AND THE TUSSOCK GRASSLANDS OF NEW ZEALAND (James F. Hoy; Thomas D. Isern)

NOT SO PLAIN: ART OF THE AMERICAN PRAIRIES (Joni L. Kinsey)

BOOK REVIEWS

The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination

The Prairie in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry

A Guide to Kansas Mushrooms

Into the Wilderness Dreams: Exploration Narratives of the American West, 1500-1805

What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village

Yanktonai Sioux Water Colors: Cultural Remembrances of John Saul

The Flag in American …

Review Of The Flag In American Indian Art By Toby Herbst And Joel Kopp, Russel Lawrence Barsh

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The public appetite for American Indian crafts and artistic motifs can be traced back to the early part of this century, the same period of American cultural nativism that inspired the Arts and Crafts movement in midwestern industrial cities and a flight of young painters and sculptors to fledgling artists' colonies in the American Southwest. Before the Depression put an end to this bonanza for nativeborn talent, American Indians had been able to stake a large claim in media as diverse as miniature totem poles, beadwork, and basketry. While museums scoured the countryside for medicine bundles, pipes, and headdresses, the …

Review Of Birger Sandzen: An Illustrated Biography By Emory Lindquist, Ann Davis

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In Birger Sandzén Lindquist combines biography and art analysis. The first half of the book looks at Sandzen's early years and his decades at Bethany College. After a rich section of forty-nine color plates, the author turns to an examination of the influences on his painting, his methods, the response of art critics, the graphic work, and Sandzen's association with two friends as documented in correspondence. The overall result is a wellrounded picture of a positive adventurer, a regional painter whose work well deserves the recognition afforded it here.

Review Of A Generation Of Boomers: The Pattern Of Railroad Labor Conflict In Nineteenth-Century America By Shelton Stromquist, James W. Ely Jr.

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Stromquist concentrates on the western railroads, where labor conflict was most acute, saying little about eastern and southern lines. He perceptively treats the sometimes overlooked role of the railroads in promoting western settlement and in establishing a string of railroad towns to service trains. Carefully researched and persuasively argued, this volume would be of value to readers interested in railroad labor history, the settlement of the west, or the growth of industrial America.

Review Of The Prairie In Nineteenth-Century American Poetry By Steven Olson, Mark Kamrath

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The Prairie in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry is an important book about prairie and plains imagery in nineteenth-century American poetry. Situating his study among Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land, Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden, and Annette Kolodny's The Land Before Her, Olson argues that nineteenth- century American poets created a "new American poetry" (171) in the ways they describe the prairies and "symbolically incorporate people, imagination, ideology, and place in the United States" (vii).

Review Of Buckeye Blake: Art On The Western Front By Sarah E. Boehme, Martha H. Kennedy

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This handsomely designed exhibition catalogue presents an overview of appealing work by Buckeye Blake, an important contemporary artist of the American West. Published by the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in association with the University of Washington Press, the catalogue includes a preface by Center drector Peter H. Hassrick, introduction by Thomas McGuane, insightful essay by crator Sarah E. Boehme, and colored plates of 44 pieces by, or relating to, Blake.

Review Of A Reader's Companion To The Fiction Of Willa Cather By John March, Kari Ronning

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Literary archaeologists of the future may be able to reconstruct the outlines and many of the details of Cather's fiction just from this comprehensive and readable guide. John March spent nearly forty years compiling the materials, while editors Arnold and Thornton and their team spent nearly six more editing, verifying, and documenting. Easily obtained information is generally omitted; what remains, as Arnold's introduction emphasizes, is March's personal selection, and the length and emphasis of most of the notes reflect his interpretations.

Review Of American Indian Law Deskbook Edited By Julie Wrend And Clay Smith, John R. Wunder

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

As a complete reference tool, however, American Indian Law Deskbook is merely adequate. While significant case law is included, it is not as thoroughly analyzed in the body of the book as one might expect. Moreover, the bibliography of non-statutory law and noncase law is significantly shallow. Another weakness is found in the first five sections. They purport to offer a summary of the evolution of federal Indian policy; legal definitions of Indian, Indian tribe, and Indian country; and criminal law and civil law regulations. These sections are very limited, briefer than the treatment accorded them in Felix Cohen's Handbook …

Review Of Then To The Rock Let Me Fly: Luther Bohanon And Judicial Activism By Jace Weaver, Gordon Morris Bakken

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

This is a sympathetic biography of one of Oklahoma's distinguished members of the federal bench. The author chronicles Luther Bohanon's transition from the bar to the judiciary in a well-crafted narrative. On the federal trial bench, Bohanon exhibited a tenacious adherence to a liberal view of the United States Constitution. To flesh out this view of the Constitution, the author focuses upon three celebrated cases. For legal historians, this book may seem limited in its coverage, but for historians of Oklahoma it provides a close look at some of the important events of the civil rights struggle.

Review Of North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, And Differentiation By Terry G. Jordan, Brad A. Bays

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In this important companion to his earlier book, The American Backwoods Frontier, Terry Jordan has again taken the study of cultural diffusion into a new realm of inquiry and interpretation. Although mainly a synthesis of a vast and interdisciplinary literature, North American Cattle Ranching Frontiers offers a revisionist explanation of the origins, spread, and patterns of cattle ranching in most of North America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. This study will prove to be an even more innovative and controversial work than Backwoods, for the questions asked and the solutions provided are grand ones indeed. A cultural geographer, Jordan tailors …

Review Of Isolation And Masquerade: Willa Cather's Women By Frances W. Kaye And Willa Cather By Sharon O'Brien, Lillian Faderman

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

In her introduction to Isolation and Masquerade Frances Kaye immediately establishes her disagreement with Sharon O'Brien's views of Willa Cather as they appear in O'Brien's 1987 work, Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. O'Brien's 1995 book was written for the Chelsea House young adult Gay Men and Lesbians series, but though this work, unlike the 1987 book, takes the writer into her last days, O'Brien's perspective on Cather's accomplishments is essentially no different from what she has already revealed; so, we can be certain that Kaye's disagreements would also apply to O'Brien's more recent efforts. Two more different views of …

Review Of Schoolwomen Of The Prairies And Plains: Personal Narratives From Iowa, Kansas, And Nebraska, 1860-1920 By Mary Hurlbut Cordier, Sylvia Hunt

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The book is disappointing, however, in at least two respects. Although Cordier asserts that the women in her study both conformed to and challenged expectations of their gender, she fails to provide supporting evidence. The threads of autonomy for women, demands for equality (at the early date of 1860), and activism toward those ends are evidenced by these school women throughout the work, but they are not woven together into a coherent argument. It is difficult, therefore, to assess the contribution women teachers from the heartland might have made to the women's movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Review Of Homes In The Heartland: Balloon Frame Farmhouses Of The Upper Midwest, 1850-1920 By Fred W. Peterson, Barry Newton

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

The text examines the influence of balloon frame construction as part of the increasing use of industrial methods and transportation on the development of rural life. Peterson shows particular skill in understanding the process of initial settlement and the gradual adaptations and extension to the dwellings that occur as the farm and its family enlarge and become more successful. He explains in detail how the methods of balloon framing assisted these purposes and enabled families to make dwellings that suited their practical needs and moral and aesthetic choices. He also shows how the influence of architects' pattern books and builders' …

Review Of Flat Water: A History Of Nebraska And Its Water Edited By Robert Kuzelka, Charles Flowerday, Robert Manley, Bradley Rundquist, And Sally Herrin, James E. Sherow

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Read this volume if you want to know anything, nearly everything, about the history of water development in Nebraska. Robert Manley first began this book as a centennial history of the Nebraska State Irrigation Association, but he persuaded the editors of the need for a more inclusive treatment of Nebraska, which incidentally is an Omaha or Oto word meaning "Broad, Flat Water." Over thirty contributors would write the articles, draw the maps, make the charts, and take the photographs that comprise this hefty undertaking. The production staff should take pride in everyone's efforts.