Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of The Cattle Guard By James F. Hoy, R. Douglas Hurt

Great Plains Quarterly

For anyone who has traveled the back roads and trails of the range country in the Great Plains, the cattle guard is a familiar and welcome sight. It is an open gate that enables cars and trucks to pass through a fence but prevents livestock from getting out of pastures. Although many styles exist, the cattle guard essentially is a pipe, bar, or wooden grid laid over an open pit or trench. The bars are spaced so that livestock will not walk on them for fear their hooves will slip through. No one can say when the first cattle guard …

Review Of Many Tender Ties: Women In Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870 By Sylvia Van Kirk, Olive Patricia Dickason

Great Plains Quarterly

The bittersweet story of women in the fur trade of the Canadian Northwest has been a long time in the telling. According to standard historical interpretations, trading furs was an exclusively male domain; related activity, particularly if it involved women, was seen as peripheral, and often as libertine. As Sylvia Van Kirk makes clear, however, that is a one-sided view at best; the previously dismissed social aspect of the fur trade was far more important than has generally been assumed.

The Hudson's Bay Company did its official best to prevent alliances from developing between its men and Amerindian women. This …

Review Of Plains Indian Studies: A Collection Of Essays In Honor Of John C. Ewers And Waldo R. Wedel Edited By Douglas H. Ubelaker And Herman J. Viola, Warren W. Caldwell

Great Plains Quarterly

A dual Festschrift is unusual, but here we have one celebrating a collective century of achievement by John Ewers and Waldo Wedel, two scholars of the first rank. Ewers and Wedel, long-time colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution, are well known to historians and anthropologists with special interests in the plains of North America. Indeed, each has contributed to the basic structure of their respective disciplines: Ewers essentially to ethnology and Wedel to archeology. Neither scholar worked within a strictly academic setting and thus, neither had students in the usual sense, yet Ewers and Wedel have been remarkably influential and are …

Review Of A Bibliographical Guide To The Study Of Western American Literature By Richard W. Etulain, Frances W. Kaye

Great Plains Quarterly

As Richard Etulain states in his preface, this is a comprehensive but not exhaustive bibliography of books, dissertations, and articles about western American literature. The bulk of the volume lists materials on more than 350 major western authors, including some major historians and nonfiction writers, but perhaps the most significant part of the book is the section dealing with seven important aspects of the field that suggest ways of arranging research to go beyond individual works and authors to overviews and generalizations.

Etulain's categories are: (1) local color and regionalism, (2) popular western literaturedime novels and the Western, (3) western …

Review Of Prairie Mosaic: An Ethnic Atlas Of Rural North Dakota By William C. Sherman, Robert C. Ostergren

Great Plains Quarterly

Ethnic atlases appeal to the general public because they graphically verify long suspected or perceived patterns of local or regional cultural differentiation. They are useful to academia because the geographic pattern portrayed is a variable that is basic to a wide variety of scholarly inquiries. Unfortunately, good ethnic atlases are few in number because compiling the data necessary to accurately describe ethnic patterns at an appropriate scale is a difficult and time-consuming task that few are willing to undertake. Those who have the patience to do this kind of work deserve our admiration and thanks.

This atlas is the work …

Review Of The Thunderstorm In Human Affairs Edited By Edwin Kessler, Alec H. Paul

Great Plains Quarterly

This magnificent book is copiously endowed with figures and photographs, with generous pages of eight and one-half by eleven inches. The book is organized and written in such a way that the interested layperson, the meteorology student, and the thunderstorm researcher will all benefit from it. The list of authors reads like an American "who's who" of specialists in the field of thunderstorms.

The book is a project of the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, and it has much to interest residents of the Great Plains although its geographic scope encompasses the entire United States. Kessler has produced …

Review Of Inventing Billy The Kid: Visions Of The Outlaw In America, 1881-1981 By Stephen Tatum, Kent L. Steckmesser

Great Plains Quarterly

Here is a sophisticated study of an individual who is both a "timeless conventional outlaw and a timely invented outlaw." Tatum traces the changes in the images of Billy the Kid over one century, relating them to concurrent social and cultural circumstances. The historical William H. Bonney is accorded one chapter, but the book's main concern is the multitude of interpreters who have created their own versions of his life in works ranging from dime novels and biographies to ballets and films.

Initially, between 1881 and 1900, the Kid's biography was formulated as a "romance." As a "bad" badman, a …

Review Of Plains Families: Exploring Sociology Through Social History By Scott G. Mcnall And Sally Allen Mcnall, J. Allen Williams

Great Plains Quarterly

Scott and Sally McNall, of the University of Kansas, provide a new and interesting way to teach sociology. Plains Families uses the social history of the Great Plains region of the United States from the 1860s to the present to demonstrate how abstract sociological ideas and concepts are grounded in reality.

A variety of source materials (e.g., letters, diaries, interviews) are used by the authors to construct composite case histories of families. The presentation of each case is followed by a chapter designed to illustrate a major dimension of sociology. The illustration, in turn, affords the reader a much better …

Title And Contents- Summer 1984

Great Plains Quarterly

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

SUMMER 1984 VOL. 4 NO.3

CONTENTS

THE PRAIRIE MERMAID: LOVE-TESTS OF PIONEER WOMEN Robert H. Solomon

MAPPING THE INTERIOR PLAINS OF RUPERT'S LAND BY THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY TO 1870 Richard I. Ruggles

THE IMAGE OF THE HIRED GIRL IN LITERATURE: THE GREAT PLAINS, 1860 TO WORLD WAR I Sylvia Lea Sallquist

BOOK REVIEWS

Red Harvest: The Communist Party and American Farmers

Interwoven: A Pioneer Chronicle

Lambshead Before Interwoven: A Texas Range Chronicle, 1848-1878

Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915

Montana's Righteous Hangmen: The Vigilantes in Action

Belle Starr and Her Times: The Literature, the Facts …

Review Of Red Harvest: The Communist Party And American Farmers By Lowell K. Dyson, Robert W. Cherny

Great Plains Quarterly

By surveying Communist efforts to organize farmers and farm workers, Lowell K. Dyson has done for agriculture what Bert Cochran did for the CIO in Labor and Communism-presented a full account of Communist activities uncolored by Red-baiting or apologies. Dyson begins by noting the paradox in Communist efforts: "Communists sought to change the very nature of the American agricultural system, but the programs which won them the broadest hearing among farmers were aimed at preserving the system" (p. xi). Maintaining an even-handed objectivity, Dyson nonetheless conveys a sympathetic understanding of how some farmers came to espouse radicalism.

In the …

Review Of Westering Women And The Frontier Experience, 1800-1915 By Sandra L. Myres, John Mack Faragher

Great Plains Quarterly

When Professor Myres began the research for this survey of women in the American West, many historians believed that there were few manuscript collections documenting the experiences of nineteenth-century women, "Such is not the case," Myres concludes. Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800- 1915, the first volume of the Histories of the American Frontier Series devoted to the history of women, treats us to what the late Ray Allen Billington called "one of the most remarkable bibliographies to materials in this new area." Myres summarizes her extensive reading in these documents in topical chapters: western women's views of …

Review Of The American Farmer And The New Deal By Theodore Saloutos, David E. Hamilton

Great Plains Quarterly

This posthumously published study by Theodore Saloutos is an important addition to the burgeoning number of works on New Deal farm programs. The subject is enormous. Saloutos focuses on the Agricultural Adjustment Administration's efforts to curtail production and to enact marketing agreements, the struggle to broaden farm relief to include both black and white farmers on the bottom half of the rural economic and social scale, the fight to bring electricity to rural America, Henry Wallace's quest to open up the clogged system of international trade, and the programs to rescue the farmers and ranchers of the Great Plains from …

Review Of Southwestern Agriculture: Pre-Columbian To Modern Edited By Henry C. Dethloff And Irwin M. May, Jr., Mary W.M. Hargreaves

Great Plains Quarterly

This volume, a collection of the papers presented at an Agricultural History Symposium held at Texas A&M University in May 1980, brings together the work of twenty-six discussants on a wide variety of topics designed to illumine the Southwest as "a distinctive region, neither south nor west, but a cultural amalgam that is greater than the sum of its parts" (p. 1). Like most symposia, the Texas sessions provided an assemblage of papers uneven in both the subjects covered and the quality of research.

Major gaps in the survey of southwestern agriculture are evident in the absence of studies of …

Review Of Shadows Of The Indian: Stereotypes In American Culture By Raymond William Stedman, Paul H. Hutton

Great Plains Quarterly

Raymond William Stedman approaches the pervasive stereotyping of American Indians with the awe of the devotee of popular culture who was raised on stories of noble warriors and animalistic savages, but also with the outrage of a modern humanist who hopes to reveal and discredit demeaning images. This leads to an interesting dichotomy in the book as the author presents endless examples of insulting-but sometimes entertaining-Indian images from histories, novels, plays, films, and television. After more than two hundred pages of insulting, humorous, and sometimes wonderfully lascivious material, Stedman delivers a twentypage sermon on the evils of such material and …

Notes And News- Summer 1984

Great Plains Quarterly

NOTES & NEWS

PUBLISHING AWARDS

NEW PUBLICATIONS

CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

OPPORTUNITIES

Review Of Belle Starr And Her Times: The Literature, The Facts And The Legends By Glenn Shirley, Darlis A. Miller

Great Plains Quarterly

Glenn Shirley, whose extensive writings on outlaws and lawmen include Heck Thomas, Shotgun for Hire, Temple Houston, and West of Hell's Fringe, informs us that more than one hundred books and pamphlets have been published describing the exploits of Belle Starr, "the most maligned and written-about woman in America." Shirley wants to set the record straight, believing that Belle Starr deserves vindication. "My purpose," he states, "is to provide at least one comparison of contemporary reports and official records with the folklore and legends."

For aficionados of the outlaw-West, Belle Starr and Her Times will make intriguing reading. Like …

Review Of Interwoven: A Pioneer Chronicle By Sallie Reynolds Matthews & Lambshead Before Interwoven: A Texas Range Chronicle, 1848-1878 By Frances Mayhugh Holden, Sandra L. Myres

Great Plains Quarterly

Written as a memoir for her grandchildren, Sallie Reynolds Matthews's Interwoven was first printed in 1936 and reissued in 1958 in a handsomely designed edition by Texas's famous printer and designer Carl Hertzog with illustrations by E. M. (Buck) Schiwetz. As the reputation of the Matthews book grew, copies became harder and harder to find, and both the 1936 and 1958 editions are now rare and expensive. Happily this 1982 volume is an exact duplication of the 1958 Hertzog edition.

Born in 1861 in Stephens County, Texas, Sallie Reynolds grew up on the edge of the Great Plains, a harsh, …

Review Of Cowboy Life On The Texas Plains: The Photographs Of Ray Rector Edited By Margaret Rector, Charles S. Peterson

Great Plains Quarterly

This slim volume is a happy combination of photographs from the Texas ranching country and a breezy but thoughtful essay about cowboys.

The introduction by John Graves dissociates itself from the specific time and place of the photos but maintains its Texas connection in its regional values and the color of its language. Graves gives broad consideration to economic change, technological development, the persistence of tradition and myth, and the impact of ecological change upon cowboy life. The cowboys he portrays came from rural places, participated in a legend they had already absorbed, and performed their jobs for fun and …

Review Of Texas Woollybacks: The Range Sheep And Goat Industry By Paul H. Carlson, B. Byron Price

Great Plains Quarterly

Paul Carlson presents readers with a comprehensive, well-organized, and easily read treatment of a subject comparatively neglected by historians of the American livestock industry. The first major synthesis of the Texas sheep and goat business in nearly forty years, Texas Woollybacks adds measurably in detail and focus to omnibus classics like Shepherd's Empire (1945) and America's Sheep Trails (1948), and to pioneering studies of the Texas business such as Winifred Kupper's The Golden Hoof (1945) and more recently Val W. Lehmann's Forgotten Legions (1969). The author, nevertheless, leans heavily on these and a variety of other supporting secondary sources. While …

Review Of Oil Booms: Social Changes In Five Texas Towns By Roger M. Olien And Diana Davids Olien & Oil In West Texas And New Mexico: A Pictorial History Of The Permian Basin By Walter Rundell, Jr., Frederick W. Rathjen

Great Plains Quarterly

The Permian Basin covers about sixty-eight thousand square miles of west-central Texas and the adjacent southeastern corner of New Mexico. About two hundred million years ago the region lay beneath a salt sea that laid down a limestone floor upon which were subsequently deposited complex geologic formations that entrapped equally complex ecosystems. This combination of geological and biological evolution produced petroleum deposits that made possible a veritable marvel of the contemporary industrial world.

Before 1920, persons who considered themselves of sound mind found little attraction in the environment of the Permian Basin, for the region seems to present the worst …

Review Of Gauchos And The Vanishing Frontier By Richard W. Slatta, Douglas W. Richmond

Great Plains Quarterly

Professor Slatta has written a solid social history of the Argentine countryside in the nineteenth century. Not only does he describe and analyze the life-style of the gauchos-in itself, a formidable task-but he also outlines changes in the economy and in the political structure.

Slatta's research is quite thorough. He avoids the tendency of many historians of Argentina to overlook primary sources, especially in the Archivo General de la Nacion. Moreover, the author has looked into provincial archives, particularly those at Tandil, and demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the relevant secondary sources.

Handsomely produced and graced by attractive illustrations as …

Review Of The West Of Wild Bill Hickok By Joseph G. Rosa, Gary L. Roberts

Great Plains Quarterly

Joseph G. Rosa's earlier book They Called Him Wild Bill is not only the definitive biography of the redoubtable James Butler Hickok but also a model for biographies of other western figures. The same qualities that marked Rosa's original biography of Hickok are evident in the present work. The West of Wild Bill Hickok is not a revision of the original biography (although it does present some new material not included in Rosa's 1974 revised edition), but rather, a thoughtful and detailed examination of the photographic record of the life and times of wild Bill Hickok. The purpose of the …

Review Of Wichita: The Early Years, 1865-1880 By H. Craig Miner, John C. Schneider

Great Plains Quarterly

City histories written in the late nineteenth century by amateurs were panegyrics to local men of property and standing. City "biography" was very much just that-a collective biography of the men who made the city what it was. As the discipline of urban history has matured, the view that tied each community's development to the unique personalities of its leaders has given way to an interest in the process of urbanization and the examination of cities as case studies, important primarily because of what they say about the larger urban experience.

Craig Miner's Wichita is a throwback to the …

Review Of Jewels Of The Plains: Wildflowers Of The Great Plains Grasslands And Hills By Claude A. Barr, Curtis M. Twedt

Great Plains Quarterly

After earning a degree from Drake University, author Claude Barr settled on a homestead just south of the Black Hills. In addition to his principal occupation as a rancher, Barr began to observe and propagate native plants in his small garden. One of his earliest ventures into writing about his avocation was an article in 1930 on the pasqueflower. He commented, "I was paid $20 for it, which seemed like a munificent price." This modest effort led to at least one hundred articles over the next fifty years.

Jewels of the Plains is not simply a compilation of plant characteristics …

Review Of The Platte: Channels In Time By Paul A. Johnsgard, Leslie T. Whipp

Great Plains Quarterly

This little book about Nebraska's Platte River is an inch wide and a mile deep.

In both form and content, the book is an argument for the life of the Platte River Valley. The prose text is less than a hundred pages; weaving in and around it are verses from Pawnee songs; maps and aerial photos; photos of animals, birds, and plants. Appendices identify the many different species of life that flourish in the valley, their locales and seasons.

The text takes us from before time until our own time, then confronts us with tomorrow. The author associates the Platte …

Review Of This Remarkable Continent: An Atlas Of United States And Canadian Society And Cultures Edited By John F. Rooney, Jr., Wilbur Zelinsky, And Dean R. Louder, David J. Wishart

Great Plains Quarterly

What would you like to know about the cultural geography of the United States and Canada? Many aspects of society and culture in North America are displayed on the 387 maps and drawings in this fine atlas, which is a major landmark in the development of cultural geography.

The atlas is an outgrowth of the work of the Society for the North American Cultural Survey, which has as its long-term goal the production of a definitive atlas of contemporary American cultures based on fieldwork and surveys. This Remarkable Continent is an interim report that represents the extent of existing knowledge. …

Review Of Men Of The Steel Rails: Workers On The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, 1869- 1900 By James H. Ducker, Robert H. Zieger

Great Plains Quarterly

Using an impressive array of company and union publications, newspapers, directories, and archival materials, James H. Ducker delineates the lives and experiences of the Santa Fe Railroad's labor force. Although he includes three chapters relating to unionism, strike action, and working-class politics, his main focus is on the more private side of his subjects' stories. Even in his chapter on the railroad unions, the author is as interested in the fraternal and social functions they served as in their collective bargaining character.

Ducker carefully places each of his topics in an appropriate historiographical context. When dealing with the strikes of …

Mapping The Interior Plains Of Rupert's Land By The Hudson's Bay Company To 1870, Richard I. Ruggles

Great Plains Quarterly

By royal charter, Charles II in 1670 granted to a small coterie of London entrepreneurs, united in a joint stock company, exclusive trading privileges in a vast territory of then unknown dimensions. The group was the "Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay," the Hudson's Bay Company. The territory was Rupert's Land, named for Prince Rupert, cousin of the monarch, who graciously consented to act as the first governor of the company. By charter, Rupert's Land included "all the Landes Countryes and Territoryes upon the Coastes and Confynes of the Seas" lying within Hudson Strait, that is, the …

The Image Of The Hired Girl In Literature The Great Plains, 1860 To World War I, Sylvia Lea Sallquist

Great Plains Quarterly

On farms and in small towns across the Great Plains during the nineteenth century, hired girls were necessary domestic helpers. Spring planting and fall harvest compounded the normally heavy work load of farm women, and even in towns, housekeeping was labor intensive. Help with the daily chores was always welcome. As a result, hired girls were in keen demand and short supply. Despite their crucial role in housekeeping, hired girls have received little systematic attention from scholars. Social historians have recently displayed renewed interest in servants, but their works have focused on domestics in the urban East and have given …

Review Of The Matador Land And Cattle Company By W. M. Pearce, Richard A. Bartlett

Great Plains Quarterly

The question that immediately comes to mind is: what justified a second printing in hardcover of this book first published eighteen years ago? The book is certainly well written, though it is not of great literary excellence; it is also very well organized and researched, yet not brilliantly so. The real contribution is clearly its subject matter.

In 1882 a group of businessmen, most of them from in and around Dundee, Scotland, purchased for $1,250,000 what became the Matador Land and Cattle Company. At the time, many other British and Scottish investors were also plunging into the American cattle business. …