Review: Ranching and the American West: A History in Documents, by Susan Nance

Abstract

Book Review| November 01 2023 Review: Ranching and the American West: A History in Documents, by Susan Nance Susan Nance. Ranching and the American West: A History in Documents. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2021. 224 pp. Paperback $29.95. John Ryan Fischer John Ryan Fischer JOHN RYAN FISCHER, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls, received his PhD in history from the University of California, Davis. His first book is Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of California and Hawai‘i (2015). His current work examines the movements and adaptations of Meskwaki and Sauk peoples from the 1600s to the 1800s. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (4): 119–121. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.4.119 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John Ryan Fischer; Review: Ranching and the American West: A History in Documents, by Susan Nance. California History 1 November 2023; 100 (4): 119–121. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.4.119 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search This document reader, part of the Broadview Sources Series, gathers forty-two documents—including published accounts, newspaper articles, photographs, and advertisements—concerning a wide array of issues related to the management of cattle and horses in the American West. In the introduction, the collection’s editor Susan Nance succinctly states the book’s theme as “the transformation of animals and the land from beings and entities with intrinsic value to entities taken to be property or commodities” (1). The sources do stretch beyond this framework to include issues surrounding the ethnicity and gender of ranch owners and laborers, different cultures’ understandings of cattle and horses, and the lives and behaviors of the animals themselves. Altogether, Nance’s documents tell the story of an animal-driven colonial transformation of the American West through the horses, cattle, and people that enabled it. Nance groups the sources into six parts, beginning with European introductions of animals and Native American horse... You do not currently have access to this content.