Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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 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

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 The Most Promising Young Officer: A Life Of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie By Michael D. Pierce, Michael L. Tate

Great Plains Quarterly

Michael D. Pierce has produced a credible and nicely written interpretation of Ranald Mackenzie's life. By focusing on the frontier years and placing this officer's experiences within the broader context of military events, he provides the reader a good sense of time and place. Pierce also successfully utilizes the standard source materials and moves well beyond Robert G. Carter's somewhat unreliable On the Border with Mackenzie (1935). Unfortunately, the personal dimensions of Mackenzie's thoughts and deeds will never be fully known because he was an intensely private man who left little documentation about himself. Even his official reports tend to …

Review Of Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food On The Oregon Trail By Jacqueline Williams, Roger Welsch

Great Plains Quarterly

Williams uses original texts liberally-diaries, letters, contemporary published accounts, cookbooks-and a method I appreciate: voices from the past, rather than a modern voice telling us what voices from the past said. The book's illustrations and photos significantly add to the reader's understanding and appreciation of the severe demands of cookery on the Trail.

Review Of A Vast Amount Of Trouble: A History Of The Spring Creek Raid By John W. Davis, David A. Wolff

Great Plains Quarterly

What of the wider significance? Here Davis only meekly treads. The convictions seemingly changed the dynamics on the range, with the cattlemen subdued. But the trial did not do this alone. The changing power relationship had been a long time coming. Sheep had dominated the range for years before the raid, and in 1905 the Wyoming Wool Growers Association organized as an effective political agent. Davis touches on these points but does not stress them as vital to the success of the prosecution. At times, the sheriff and the county attorney seem to be battling everyone else in the county. …

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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 …

The 1992 Secession Movement In Southwest Kansas, Peter J. Mccormick

Great Plains Quarterly

In May of 1992 the Kansas state legislature approved and Governor Joan Finney signed into law a new school finance formula that adversely affected several southwest Kansas counties. The new bill provided for a blanket mill levy of 32 mills ($32 in taxes for every $1000 assessed valuation) to be spread across the state. It also restricted funding to a maximum of $3600 per student. The effects in the southwest were drastic. Many districts there, accustomed to setting their own tax rates and to retaining all monies collected, spent upward of $5000 per student on tax levies below 20 mills. …

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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 …

Notes & News

Great Plains Quarterly

GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

BOOK AWARDS (David Wishart; John Wunder)

CALLS FOR PAPERS

CANADIAN STUDIES GRANT PROGRAMS, 1996-97

FROM THE ARCHIVES (Richard Popp)

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ASSOCIATIONS

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly

THE PROGRESSIVE CONTEXT OF THE NEBRASKA CAPITOL: THE COLLABORATION OF GOODHUE AND TACK (Frederick C. Luebke)

THE 1992 SECESSION MOVEMENT IN SOUTHWEST KANSAS (Peter J. McCormick)

BISON ECOLOGY, BRULE AND YANKTON WINTER HUNTING, AND THE STARVING WINTER OF 1832-33 (Richmond Clow)

BOOK REVIEWS

An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians

The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull

Following the Indian Wars: The Story of the Newspaper Correspondents among the Indian Campaigners

On Turner's Trail: 100 Years of Writing Western History

The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley

Redefining the American Dream

Where the …

Review Of Redefining The American Dream: The Novels Of Willa Cather By Sally Peltier Harvey, Evelyn I. Funda

Great Plains Quarterly

Harvey's book will be of interest not only to Cather scholars, but to an audience more widely concerned with literature as an expression of culture. By citing some of Cather's contemporaries (Andrew Carnegie's exegesis of the "Gospel of Wealth" and William James's identification of success as the country's "bitch-goddess," for instance) as well as her literary peers (Howells, Dreiser, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck among them), then complementing this with more recent cultural studies of the early twentieth century (such as Jackson Lears's examination of intellectual transformation and Warren Sussman's study of the changing perceptions of the individual), Harvey gives us a …

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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.

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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

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

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 …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly

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

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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 …

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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 Orphan Trains: Placing Out In America By Marilyn Irvin Holt, Fred Erisman

Great Plains Quarterly

One of the most haunting stories of the American West is the legend of the "orphan trains." Relating the practice of taking homeless children from the teeming cities and resettling them in the nation's heartland where they could grow and prosper as youngsters should, the story tacitly invokes some of the most potent of American myths-the Turner safety-valve theory, the Horatio Alger tale of the self-made person, and, more darkly, the lingering traces of Social Darwinism. The Orphan Trains strives to set the record straightnot to debunk the legend, but to give it its proper niche in western history. Emphasizing …

Review Of The Cowboy: Representations Of Labor In An American Work Culture By Blake Allmendinger, Matt Hokom

Great Plains Quarterly

Of all the mythologies Americans have constructed for themselves, that surrounding the cowboy is among the most influential and persistent. Blake Allmendinger's book attempts to correct this popularized myth by examining how cowboys represented themselves. The Cowboy argues that authentic cowboy culture is best defined as an expression of labor and its self-representation in art. While this is an interesting direction to take in itself, what especially recommends it is Allmendinger's interdisciplinary method. He skillfully combines traditional historical and literary approaches with an examination of folkloric and pop culture sources to create a complex picture of an evolving culture.

Review Of Soils In Archaeology: Landscape Evolution And Human Occupation Vance T. Holliday, William C. Johnson

Great Plains Quarterly

Soils in Archaeology consists of papers representing the proceedings of the Fryxell Symposium held at the annual meetings of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in Phoenix during April 1988. This is a volume that deals with soil science applications to archaeology: the various papers discuss the application of soils science to reconstruction of past landscapes and their evolution, estimation of surface age and depositional episodes, and provide physical and chemical indications of human presence. The volume provides good examples of archaeological geology (geoarchaeology) as executed by four physical geographers, two geologists, an archaeologist and a soil scientist.

Review Of The Sioux And Other Native American Cultures Of The Dakotas: An Annotated Bibliography Compiled By Herbert T. Hoover And Karen P. Zimmerman, Steve Potts

Great Plains Quarterly

This volume is an excellent supplement to Hoover and Jack Marken's 1980 Bibliography of the Sioux, and the two volumes can be used together for a thorough treatment of the Sioux. The title of this volume, however, is somewhat misleading. Material related to Sioux origins in Minnesota is included and recent materials on the Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Ojibway are omitted; after the first chapter, most annotations are on the Sioux. The authors note in their introduction that this volume complements South Dakota History, a 1993 bibliography of the state's history, and the two volumes share a common …

Grasslands An Introduction, Kathleen H. Keeler

Great Plains Quarterly

"Grasslands" was the subject of the seventeenth annual symposium of the Center for Great Plains Studies, held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in April 1994. Grasslands are so basic to the Great Plains experience as to be invisible. If you stand here in eastern Nebraska, it is so far in any direction across grasslands to any other landscape (a cornfield is a planted grassland, after all) that the role of grasslands in our lives does not seem worth considering. Local variation is much more visible. You can't see the prairie for the grasses, to adapt the idiom. And yet, grasslands …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly

GREAT PLAINS STUDIES SYMPOSIA

CHEROKEE NATION PAPERS

CALLS FOR PAPERS

JOINT CONFERENCE

Not So Plain Art Of The American Prairies, Joni L. Kinsey

Great Plains Quarterly

Since the first European encounters with the grasslands of central North America, beginning with Coronado in the mid-sixteenth century, prairies have alternately confused, dismayed, overwhelmed, depressed, and inspired those who would contend with their contradictions. They have been described as being both nothing and everything, empty as well as vast, monotonous and endlessly varied. For those who saw them in their pristine state, prairies were often disorienting, a place to be lost, whereas today they have become the "heartland" where Americans look to find their truest identity. While such disparities have frustrated many writers who have attempted to convey something …

Table Of Contents

Great Plains Quarterly

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 Political Economy Of North American Indians Edited By John H. Moore, Larry Burt

Great Plains Quarterly

This book consists primarily of essays that were first delivered before the Twelfth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences held in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1988. Billed as Marxist in perspective, it seeks to show that Indian history should be seen more as economic conflict than cultural clash.

In the introductory piece the editor provides an excellent overview of the history of political economy in general and its use in anthropology in particular. The articles that follow vary widely in length, scope, and quality. All somehow explain the motivation behind governmental policy, as well as developments within Indian communities, as …