Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

This Week At The Opera House Popular Musical Entertainment At Great Plains Opera Houses, 1887-1917, D. Layne Ehlers

Great Plains Quarterly

Americans in the years immediately preceding the twentieth century clung to a naivete reminiscent of the manifest destiny days. Novels, newspaper accounts, and old-fashioned, rousing melodramas on the stage all displayed a predilection for an American way which showed that moral good, coupled with patience, would triumph, providing it remained within carefully proscribed social and ethical limits. "Home Sweet Home," the most popular song of its time, celebrated the simple virtues of hearth and family.

Nowhere was this vision of life more apparent than in the Great Plains. By 1877 the days when Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff welcomed trail-weary …

Powerful Feelings Recollected In Tranquility Literary Criticism And Lakota Social Song Poetry, R. D. Theisz

Great Plains Quarterly

The anthropologist and ethnomusicologist William K. Powers, in his Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture, laments that the discipline of ethnomusicology-and music pedagogy-with its emphasis on the vocal and instrumental "art music" traditions of musically literate peoples has been lax in accepting anthropological theory. Thus, Powers points out that ethnomusicology, where it is concerned with the music of oral, indigenous cultures, adheres to outdated theories on "primitive" music and displays a telling absence of ethnographic abilities.¹ Reflecting Powers' judgment, it seems to me that the conceptual seams between anthropology, ethnomusicology, and musicology are rather formidable.

At …

The Musical Landscape Of Sinclair Ross's As For Me And My House, Philip R. Coleman-Hull

Great Plains Quarterly

In his essay "Sinclair Ross in Letters and Conversation," David Stouck recounts Ross's humble reactions to the array of criticism given to his first and most famous novel, As For Me and My House:

"You understand the [Bendeys] perhaps better than I do, or at least did when I was writing. For when I was writing I was participating and when you participate you often don't understand or see. More was coming I suppose than I knew." In this same vein he has often remarked that critical articles about the novel amaze him-discuss ions of Chopin and George Sand, …

Notes And News- Summer 2000

Great Plains Quarterly

Notes And News

Call For Papers: "Rhetoric On The Great Plains"

Sacred Lands: Plains Indian Seminar

Greatplains.Org

Omaha Indian Music

Association For Canadian Studies Colloquium

Northern Great Plains History Conference

Internet Resources On The Great Plains

The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920

Review Of New Worlds From Old: 19th Century Australian And American Landscapes By Elizabeth Johns, Andrew Sayers, And Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, With Amy Ellis, Julie K. Brown

Great Plains Quarterly

An exhibition of nineteenth-century landscape art from the United States and Australia (the latter a British colony until federation in 1901) is such an excellent idea one wonders why it has not been done before. Such an ambitious and challenging project, however, has some inherent dangers in collapsing historical differences for the sake of presentation. Assessing cultural productions must take into account distinct histories in these two "settler countries," especially in the creation of their respective national identities-as Lyn Spillman has already demonstrated in her excellent Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia (1997).

New …

Review Of Contemporary American Indian Literatures And The Oral Tradition By Susan Berry Brill De Ramirez, James H. Cox

Great Plains Quarterly

Brill de Ramirez's work addresses at least two crucial issues that scholars of Native American literatures must consider every time they read: what cultural contexts are informing the texts, and what critical approaches to these contexts and texts will not perpetuate academic or intellectual colonialism. In Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts (1993), Greg Sarris explains that in addition to a careful consideration of American Indian cultural and historical contexts, a reader must also consider the history of her or his own readings. Slug Woman, an important precursor to Brill de Ramirez's study, proposes that …

Review Of Our Treasures/Nuestros Tesoros: A Celebration Of Nebraska's Mexican Heritage/Una Celebración De La Herencia Mexicana De Nebraska By Ralph F. Grajeda, Et Al, Juan R. García

Great Plains Quarterly

Our Treasures/Nuestros Tesoros is part of a grant funded project designed to collect and preserve the cultural heritage of Mexican Americans in Nebraska. The information presented is largely drawn from oral histories and interviews of residents living in Grand Island, Lincoln, Omaha, and Scottsbluff.

The published volume consists of five parts. "Mexicans in Nebraska," by Ralph Grajeda, provides a general survey of Mexican immigration into the state. Much of the information covers the period before Wodd War II and focuses on the first two waves of immigration of Mexicans into the US and Nebraska. Although those familiar with the history …

Review Of Backyard Visionaries: Grassroots Art In The Midwest Edited By Barbara Brackman And Cathy Dwigans, Karen Janovy

Great Plains Quarterly

Always eager to plunge into books with enticing epigraphs (such as Archibald MacLeish's "A world ends when its metaphor has died"), I was not disappointed with Brackman and Dwigans's Backyard Visionaries. Beautifully illustrated, it not only documents, with excellent notes, a kind of "visionary" art, much of which exists on site rather than in museums, but also highlights model preservation efforts by the Kansas Grassroots Art Association (KGAA) of historically significant outsider art. Elizabeth Broun's illuminating introduction states that this art, first coined "outsider" art in 1972, has found an "exceptional environment throughout the Midwest" since the …

Review Of The Power Of Kiowa Song: A Collaborative Ethnography By Luke E. Lassiter, Victoria Lindsay Levine

Great Plains Quarterly

In his informative and innovative exploration of Kiowa music, Luke Lassiter focuses on intersubjective, phenomenological, and experiential aspects of Kiowa song. Employing collaborative ethnography, a method that "fully embraces dialogue in both ethnographic practice and ethnographic writing," he discloses the ways in which his own social interactions with Kiowa consultants have informed his ethnography.

The book is divided into two parts. The first, "Experience, Dialogue, and Ethnography," recounts Lassiter's early impressions of Plains Indians and the gradual transformation of his understanding. The second, "Powwows, the Gourd Dance, and Kiowa Song," offers his interpretation of the social worlds in which Kiowa …

"Going To Indian Territory": Attitudes Toward Native Americans In Little House On The Prairie, Philip Heldrich

Great Plains Quarterly

Since its first printing in 1935, Little House on the Prairie has been a perennial favorite among countless readers. The Little House series itself ranks consistently as one of the most commercially popular of all times. However, Little House on the Prairie, the second book in the series, has become the center of numerous controversies. Yellow Medicine East School District, in Granite, Minnesota, which serves a portion of the Upper Sioux Community of that region, stopped class reading of the book, citing disgust with the text's portrayals of Native Americans. Such action follows a similar banning of the text …

"Wild Men" And Dissenting Voices: Narrative Disruption In Little House On The Prairie, Donna M. Campbell

Great Plains Quarterly

Long considered to be a work celebrating traditional pioneer values, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has in recent years come under increasing attack for its stereotypic racial representations and attitudes. In one notable instance, novelist Michael Dorris describes trying to read the novels to his daughters and stopping because of the unfavorable depictions of Native American characters and Ma's "unreconstructed" bigotry. Dorris and others present a compelling argument about the potential negative effects of such representations, yet to dismiss the work as though Wilder's vision of other races represents a …

Citizenship And Treaty Rights: The Indian Association Of Alberta And The Canadian Indian Act, 1946-1948, Laurie Meijer Drees

Great Plains Quarterly

In the spring of 1946, J. Allison Glen announced a public inquiry into Canada's federal administration of Indian Affairs and the Indian Act. In Parliament on 13 May 1946 this minister of Mines and Resources responsible for Indian Affairs moved "That a joint committee of the senate and house of commons be appointed to examine and consider the Indian Act ... with authority to investigate and report upon Indian administration in general" including treaty rights, band membership, enfranchisement of Indians, Indian schools, and "any other matter or thing pertaining to the social and economic status of Indians and their advancement."! …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly

Contents:

Frederick C. Luebke Award 2000
California Indian Conference
Internships at the American Folklife Center
Intertribal Bison Cooperative Conference 2000

Little Squatter On The Osage Diminished Reserve: Reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Kansas Indians, Frances W. Kaye

Great Plains Quarterly

Laura Ingalls Wilder was a person of her time and place. She fictionalized her memories to give what she honestly believed was the truest possible account-true in deeply human ways as well as in accurate details-of one family's settlement history on the Great Plains frontier. I have never really liked her work. While my sister read all the Little House books, I read ... Zane Grey. That I do not share Wilder's values and point of view is no argument against the books-I do not share Zane Grey's values and point of view, either. But Zane Grey is not held …

Review Of From Mountain Man To Millionaire: The “Bold And Dashing Life” Of Robert Campbell, By William R. Nester., Jay H. Buckley

Great Plains Quarterly

Robert Campbell's story has finally been told. Although at least three theses and one dissertation covering some aspect or period of his life (1804-1879) do exist, William Nester has now rendered an excellent full-dress biography of this Rocky Mountain entrepreneur, St. Louis businessman, and Indian commissioner.

Review Of Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900 – 1940, By Brenda J. Child, David W. Adams

Great Plains Quarterly

The appearance in recent years of several books on Indian boarding schools attests to historians' growing realization that the efforts of the federal government to solve the so-called Indian problem through education is one of the significant chapters in the history of Indian- white relations. Determined to strip Indian youth of all vestiges of Native outlook, while simultaneously inculcating the knowledge and attitudes of their white colonizers, policy-makers by the end of the nineteenth century had constructed a network of reservation and off-reservation boarding schools devoted to accomplishing the "civilization" process.

Review Of Visions Of Freedom On The Great Plains: An Illustrated History Of African Americans In Nebraska, By Bertha W. Calloway And Alonzo M. Smith., Ernie Chambers

Great Plains Quarterly

Historical or hysterical-that is the question. An 18 January 1999 Omaha World-Herald "Bookwords" column fingered Dr. Smith as "the principal writer" of Visions. In a 14 January 1999 review, The Reader of Omaha gushed: "an exciting new picture book ... filled with picture after crisp black-and-white picture ... a must for anyone even slightly interested in local history." Napoleon decried history as a fable agreed on. To deem this error-riddled book a "history" would be indeed a fable agreed on. This could have been a magnificent project-but what we have instead merits those saddest "words of tongue or pen …

Review Of Betraying The Omaha Nation, 1790 - 1916, By Judith A. Boughter., Mark J. Awakuni-Swetland

Great Plains Quarterly

The question of whose history is portrayed in any historical narrative remains open to debate. Judith Boughter notes in the preface to Betraying the Omaha Nation that "until now, no one has written a comprehensive history of the Omahas from their legendary origins to their near destitution by the early twentieth century." Her book is reportedly the first part of a trilogy, with subsequent volumes proposing to address Omaha history through World War II as well as contemporary legal battles to regain lost lands.

Review Of Artistry In Native American Myths, By Karl Kroeber., Kathleen Danker

Great Plains Quarterly

In this volume, Karl Kroeber, Mellon Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, makes an important contribution to the understanding of the oral mythology of Native North America by using thirty-six stories to illustrate and explore the form, function, and artistic achievement of such narratives.

Review Of Wakinyan: Lakota Religion In The Twentieth Century, By Stephen E. Feraca., Tink Tinker

Great Plains Quarterly

This slim volume is essentially a caricature of an older genre of anthropological books about Indians and other colonial "others." The new "revised" edition adds precious little new material or insight to the inadequacies of the 1963 version. Feraca, a one-time US government employee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, has an inconsiderable sense of the complexities of Oglala or Lakota culture. He describes some personal observations of Lakota religious traditions at the surface level, but has no clue regarding the deeper meaning or significance of what he attempts to describe.

Review Of The Literary History Of Alberta: From Writing-On-Stone To World War Two, By George Melnyk., Pamela Banting

Great Plains Quarterly

Literary histories play a crucial role in the construction, maintenance, and enforcement of literary canons. In some academic quarters, literary histories have come to be thought of as the tanks deployed in the canon wars, forces acting to suppress awareness of the vitality of local, regional, and minority literatures, and even of the national literatures of postcolonial countries. The canon-as represented in literary histories, conservative anthologies, official prizes, traditionally designed university English courses, and other cultural apparatuses- is the bulwark resisted by younger writers, women writers, writers of color, gay, lesbian, aboriginal, and experimental writers. Literary histories themselves, however, can …

Review Of The Moccasin Speaks: Living As Captives Of The Dog Soldier Warriors, Red River War, 1874 - 1875, By Arlene Feldmann Jauken., Robert Carriker

Great Plains Quarterly

It was family pride that initially caused Arlene Jauken of southeast Nebraska to begin to research the life of her great-grandmother Sophie, one of four daughters of John German, an unfortunate pioneer who was murdered, along with three others in his family, on 11 September 1874, only a day's travel from the safety of Fort Wallace, Kansas. Almost immediately Jauken found that Sophie's story was inseparable from that of the other German girls whose lives were spared: seventeen-year- old Catherine, ransomed with twelve-year- old Sophie in March of 1875, and Julia and Addie, aged seven and five respectively, who were …

Review Of Congressional Populism And The Crisis Of The 1890s, By Gene Clanton., Robert W. Cherny

Great Plains Quarterly

Gene Clanton, emeritus professor of history at Washington State University, has spent much of his scholarly career studying Populism; this long-awaited study of congressional Populism contributes significantly to our understanding of that party.

Review Of In A Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession And Survival, By Paula Mitchell Marks., Leroy V. Eid

Great Plains Quarterly

In A Barren Land covers a four-hundred-year history with the large brush strokes required of a text incorporating, chronologically and creditably, all the generally agreed upon major points of that story. What is in reality a large number of stories, each unfolding within a complex non-Western setting and often with byzantine logic, becomes for Marks-as the book's title succinctly indicates-a focus on what is now the usual media story of peoples dispossessed by an unstoppable force.

Review Of Flight Dreams: A Life In The Midwestern Landscape, By Lisa Knopp., Linda M. Hasselstrom

Great Plains Quarterly

Lisa Knopp's story will be encouragingly familiar to those who struggle to find meaning in the muddle of family, education, mistakes, insights, and loves we encounter growing up. Flight Dreams is part of Singular Lives, the Iowa Series in North American Autobiography, whose editor asserts in a foreword that Knopp's Way parallels ancient Oriental definitions of the Tao and its three parallel paths. The book proceeds through the writer's childhood, through various work and religious experiences (including Transcendental Meditation and augury), and finally to her writing about nature and her interpretation of her past. Its three major sections show internal …

Review Of A Female Economy: Women’S Work In A Prairie Province, 1870 - 1970 , By Mary Kinnear., Nanci Langford

Great Plains Quarterly

A Female Economy analyses how women disposed of their labor during the century from 1870 to 1970 in the Canadian province of Manitoba. This ambitious project, the culmination of Mary Kinnear's interests and activities in the history of women's work, reflects the skills of a mature scholar who has lived with the material for decades.

Review Of The Mounted Police And Prairie Society, 1873 - 1919, Edited By William M. Baker., Morris Mott

Great Plains Quarterly

From its creation in 1873 until the end of the First World War, when it was given Dominion- wide responsibilities, the North West Mounted Police primarily enforced the law on the Canadian Prairies and in the Canadian North. By 1904, its reputation as an effective frontier Force was so positive it was designated the Royal North West Mounted Police. Until the 1970s, historical writing on the Force tended toward the antiquarian and overly reverential; since then it has become more searching. In this volume William M. Baker draws attention to some of the best work on the Force from the …

Review Of The Sacred Pipe: An Archetypal Theology, By Paul B. Steinmetz., Jordan Paper

Great Plains Quarterly

Father Steinmetz spent twenty years as a priest among the Oglala Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota collaborating with major Lakota Traditionalist-Catholic elders. Among the first to integrate indigenous rituals into Catholic practices following Vatican II, Steinmetz undertook a vision fast, through which he received an understanding that Christ was present in both the consecrated host and the Sacred Pipe. This volume follows several decades of reflection on this experience.

Review Of Forging The Prairie West, By John Herd Thompson., Adele Perry

Great Plains Quarterly

John Herd Thompson's Forging the Prairie West is a wise, clever, and decisive book, though not an especially consistent one. But that hardly matters: Thompson's lively prose, trenchant observations, and firm portrayal of the Prairie West's history make for an analysis both accessible and engaging.

Review Of Fort Robinson And The American West, 1874 - 1899, By Thomas R. Buecker., Frank N. Schubert

Great Plains Quarterly

The Army established Fort Robinson near the source of the White River on the Pine Ridge in northwestern Nebraska in 1874. The post saw active service in the best known war between the United States and Plains Natives, the Sioux War of 1876, and was the site of the death of Crazy Horse. It also witnessed the tragic Cheyenne outbreak of January 1878, the bloodiest episode in the post's history. This book, the first of a projected two-volume study, covers these events and the next two decades, during which the United States emerged as an imperial power.