Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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 …

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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 Guide To Kansas Mushrooms By Bruce Horn, Richard Kay, And Dean Abel, Wendell Gauger

Great Plains Quarterly

One hundred fifty species of Kansas macrofungi are described in this welcome Guide. Each described species is accompanied by a photograph, a feature which, along with the authors' attempt to restrict the number of species included, adds greatly to the usefulness of this book. The quality of the photographs is uniformly excellent. The written descriptions are engaging, yet informative. Technical "jargon" is kept to a minimum. I found the book easy to read. For example the authors tell us that "Reports on the edibility of this species [Laccaria laccata] vary from mediocre to superb, which tells us …

Review Of Singing An Indian Song: A Biography Of D' Arcy Mcnickle By Dorothy R. Parker, Robert F. Gish

Great Plains Quarterly

D'Arcy McNickle occupies a position of relatively minor but increasing stature in American Indian history and literature. Dorothy R. Parker's volume is thus a welcome addition to the increasing number of monographs, critical studies, and general commentaries about this ordinary but successful individual.

Modern biography is characterized by a fascination with people who, although notable, are seldom as illustrious and "famous" as the figures who traditionally engaged the attention of earlier, particularly nineteenth-century, biographers. In this sense, McNickle is clearly a modern subject; and reader interest in him, although keen among enthusiasts, will probably be limited.

Review Of They Called It Prairie Light: The S Tory Of Chilocco Indian School By K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Matthew L. Jones

Great Plains Quarterly

They Called it Prairie Light is the best book I have read recently about life in the boarding school system. The narration and interviews are interwoven into an easy readable style. Lomawaima has done an exceptional job of painting a very richly textured picture of Native peoples' undaunted spirit.

Review Of Indian Water In The New West Edited By Thomas R. Mcguire, William B. Lord, And Mary G. Wallace, Lawrence C. Kelly

Great Plains Quarterly

There is not enough space in this brief review to comment adequately upon the various papers. Both the dangers and the advantages of negotiated settlements are explicated in this timely addition to the literature which is highly recommended to students of American Indians, the West, and water resource management.

Review Of Archaeology, History, And Custer's Last Battle By Richard Allen Fox, Jr., Vergil E. Noble

Great Plains Quarterly

It is important to note, however, that arechaeological knowledge is largely a product of interpretation, neither as certain nor as monolithic as Fox might have his readers believe. Indeed, some of his conclusions are sure to be disputed by fellow archaeologists with differing views, as well as by those historians he confronts directly in the book. Still, Fox deveolops a compelling argument that will serve as a point of departure for future debates on the enduring and ever-controversial subject. Accordingly, there is little doubt that his book will garner a vast audience among historians and archaeologists, students of military tactics, …

Review Of Yanktonai Sioux Water Colors: Cultural Remembrances Of John Saul By Martin Brokenleg And Herbert T. Hoover, Mary Jane Schneider

Great Plains Quarterly

Unfortunately Yanktonai Sioux Water Colors is not what it could be. People unfamiliar with Plains Indian culture will not know how to interpret the water colors and the comments are not sufficiently detailed to overcome this problem. In 1971 James Howard published descriptions of some of the water colors in the Oklahoma Anthropological Society Newsletter. Howard combined a thorough knowledge of traditional Plains Indian culture with interviews with John Saul to give the average reader a good understanding of the paintings. Some other problems will be noticeable only to the professional. Although several people are given credit for the book …

Small Historic Sites In Kansas Merging Artifactual Landscapes And Community Values, Cathy Ambler

Great Plains Quarterly

In Kansas during the past two decades, county historical societies and local community groups have initiated a trend that deserves attention-the establishment and support of small historic sites. Conceived with little aspiration of becoming the next Williamsburg, Plimoth Plantation, or Conner Prairie, they are endeavors by small communities to preserve elements of their traditional built environment and identify themselves with their respective pasts. With the community itself as its essential audience, each site celebrates a historical identity of success, harmony, and stability. Kansas's small historic sites are assembled landscapes that represent local community values, but in which rural and urban …

Some Observations On The Labor Force Of The Canadian Ranching Frontier During Its Golden Age, 1882 .. 1901, Simon M. Evans

Great Plains Quarterly

It is more than a decade since scholars like L. G. Thomas and David H. Breen challenged the assumption that the Canadian ranching frontier was a straightforward case of technological and land-use diffusion from the United States. Breen argued that the Canadian government had played a significant role in bringing the range cattle industry into being within the North West Territories during the 1880s and went on to trace the manner in which the Department of the Interior overtly supported the ranchers for the next twenty years. Under this regulatory umbrella, upheld by the forceful presence of the North West …

Notes And News

Great Plains Quarterly

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

The Front .. Gabled Log Cabin And The Role Of The Great Plains In The Formation Of The Mountain West's Built Landscape, Jon T. Kilpinen

Great Plains Quarterly

Students of American material culture have often viewed the arid, largely treeless Great Plains as an innovative source region of various aspects of western culture, especially those that gained expression on the landscape. While barbed wire and sod construction are two familiar examples, another exists in the front-gabled log dwelling, the dominant traditional building form of the Mountain and Inter-mountain Western frontier. Because the front-gabled log dwelling was indeed common on the Plains and reputedly absent in the forested, eastern United States, scholars have identified the Great Plains as the source region of this vernacular floorplan. Recent field and secondary …

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

Great Plains Quarterly

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 Standing On New Ground: Women In Alberta Edited By Catherine A. Cavanaugh And Randi R. Warne, Anita Clair Fellman

Great Plains Quarterly

This intriguing collection of accessible essays focuses largely on aspects of the relationship that Alberta women have had with public institutions, both formal and informal, from 1904 to the present. While all the essays cover worthwhile topics, some have been developed in only rudimentary fashion, while others are comprehensive and contain sophisticated analyses.

Among the articles dealing with women's voluntary activities, the highlight is an essay by Michael Owen on the Methodist and United Church Women's Missionary Society's missions to Ukrainians in eastern Alberta between 1904 and 1940. Like many missionaries elsewhere, these women had their greatest successes, not in …