{"title":"Storms and Swarms: The Role of the US Army Signal Corps' Weather Observers during the Rocky Mountain Locust Plague of the 1870s","authors":"R. Raines","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897849","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Locust outbreaks have occurred around the world throughout history. But they did not pose a serious problem in the United States until the explosion of westward settlement in the aftermath of the Civil War. An insect known as the Rocky Mountain locust, which became migratory when under environmental stress, was the culprit. Earlier outbreaks had created problems for farmers in the Great Plains, but the massive infestation in the mid-1870s caused extensive damage and threatened to halt the nation's expansion to the Pacific. An unlikely ally in the fight against the locusts came in the form of the network of weather observers belonging to the US Army Signal Corps. In conjunction with its mission for providing military communications, the Signal Corps became responsible for establishing and operating the US weather bureau from 1870 to 1891. Its national network of weather stations was well suited for providing reports on the locust outbreaks. Working with the commission of professional scientists formed to study the problem and find solutions, the Signal Corps' observers contributed vital information to support that effort. The partnership between the commission and the army represented an early attempt by the federal government to use applied science to tackle a national problem. Ultimately, the farmers themselves brought about the demise of the Rocky Mountain locust. By cultivating the locust's breeding grounds in the river valleys and using the land for grazing, the farmers drove the Rocky Mountain locust to extinction.","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"65 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42495373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making History: The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts ed. by Nancy Marie Mithlo (review)","authors":"D. Titterington","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897854","url":null,"abstract":"have been helpful to have more context, maybe a few footnotes explaining key events and key people. I’m left to wonder what a reader who is not familiar with this topic will get out of this book. It serves especially fellow scholars interested in the Ghost Dance or Wounded Knee and, importantly, Lakota communities that still struggle with this difficult past. The main contribution of “All Guns Fired at One Time” is that it introduces these firsthand Lakota accounts to a new generation of readers.","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"107 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45440212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Link to the Past and Prosperity for the Future: Niitsitapi Horse Culture in the Twenty-First Century","authors":"Brandi Bethke","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897847","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Programs of forced settlement and assimilation during the Reservation or Resettlement period disrupted many aspects of Niitsitapi lifeways. At the same time, however, they also strengthened the identity of the Blackfoot people as they resisted absorption into Euro-American culture. This persistence is seen in the continued use of and adoration for horses. While many elements of nomadic life were taken away in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there emerged a new Niitsitapi horse culture adapted for settled life. Through consultation with tribal elders and traditional horsemen and -women, this article explores the continued investment in horsemanship by the Niitsitapi people in the US and Canada.","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"19 - 42"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41549292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Oldest Maps of the Great Plains","authors":"D. Blakeslee","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897846","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897846","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay discusses maps that reflect two very different traditions of cartography. Both, however, derive from the expedition to the Great Plains led by Juan de Oñate in 1601. Archaeological evidence that confirms the location of the Native settlement called Etzanoa, which is shown on both maps, allows revision of prior interpretations of both. That process sheds new light on an old story about a city of gold.","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"1 - 17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48238499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unburied Lives: The Historical Archaeology of Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Davis, Texas, 1869–1875 by Laurie A. Wilkie (review)","authors":"Ayme J. Swartz","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897856","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"109 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49079578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Early Open-Range Cattle Ranching Industry in Nebraska: America's Greatest Farmer Plays a Role","authors":"H. J. Combs","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897848","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:David Rankin of Tarkio, Missouri, was once referred to as America's greatest farmer. At the time of his death in 1910, Rankin's accomplishments were widely sensationalized in several national publications across the country. Yet little was reported, at the time or since, relating to Rankin's activities in Nebraska's Sandhills in the 1870s and 1880s which had played an integral part in his early operation. This project examines key issues surrounding Rankin's Bar 7 Ranch and chronicles the role these events played in opening the Sandhills to early ranching activities. Issues included extinguishing Native American title to the land, illegally fencing the public domain and the advancing settlement frontier, and dealing with the dreaded Texas fever that plagued herds across the Great Plains in the late 1800s. Rankin's story, even though it covers only a brief period, provides an example of the demise of open-range ranching in Nebraska. Ultimately, Rankin played a central role in some of the great cattle drives and roundups of the 1870s and 1880s, which are \"among the best known and most romantic of American frontier icons.\"","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"43 - 63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46808412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"All Guns Fired at One Time\": Native Voices of Wounded Knee, 1890 ed. by Jerome A. Greene (review)","authors":"Rani-Henrik Andersson","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897853","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"106 - 107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46123521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hoops: A Cultural History of Basketball in America by Thomas Aiello (review)","authors":"Wade M. Davies","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897857","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"110 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45784569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Whirlwind Passed Through Our Country: Lakota Voices of the Ghost Dance by Rani-Henrik Andersson (review)","authors":"Elena Tajima Creef","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897860","url":null,"abstract":"RaniHenrik Andersson’s impeccably researched book makes a substantial contribution to the literature on the Ghost Dance that swept across Lakota country in 1890 during one of the darkest periods of tribal history marked by extreme famine, governmental and Christian assimilationist policies, persecution, and forced relocation into the new reservation system. White settler and government fears of the Ghost Dance set into motion the tragic events that would ultimately culminate in the 7th Cavalry’s massacre of some 350 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation on December 29, 1890. Building from his previous work, The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), Andersson breaks new ground by privileging a wide range of Lakota voices as the exclusive subject of this study of the Ghost Dance. His research is rich in primary materials that he carefully curates while pointing out how certain Ghost Dance accounts have become standardized over others, and how some Lakota language sources have been riddled with errors and mistranslations. Andersson revisits over 100 firsthand Lakota accounts pulled from across an impressive collection of archives and organizes these “voices” into four distinct categories that make clear there never was a single Lakota perspective on this historic ceremony inspired by the Paiute prophet Wovoka. Andersson also notes there have been very few recorded accounts by Lakota women on the Ghost Dance. To his credit, he brings women into the conversation by including several of their voices in this study— most notably Alice Ghost Horse and Josephine Waggoner. The handful of other women are cited as “anonymous woman” or “anonymous Lakota girls”— stark reminders that their voices and identities have long been halfhidden in the shadow of the archives. Andersson wistfully acknowledges in the final pages of A Whirlwind Passed Through Our Country that there is a fifth category of Lakota voices that remains beyond his reach as a nonnative scholar. Lakota stories of the Ghost Dance and its aftermath have been carefully passed down through an oral tradition across eight generations of descendants. It will be up to a new generation of rising Native scholars and historians alone to decide what from this private collection of firsthand accounts can be respectfully shared with those who wish to learn more about the Ghost Dance beyond the limits of the archive and the written page.","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"113 - 113"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42062405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Climate Change: Localizing a Complex Global Issue","authors":"Martha E. Durr","doi":"10.1353/gpq.2023.a897851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2023.a897851","url":null,"abstract":"If only science were enough, the climate crisis would be solved by now. This is a statement I remind myself of and think about daily. Serving as a State Climatologist in the Great Plains, I have the privilege of providing a sciencebased voice on localtoglobal changing climate. Global climate change is inherently complex, and often a translator is needed to understand and navigate resources to extract relevant information. Reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provide timely and valuable information. Implications and solutions to climate change have been requested by hundreds of organizations with information broadcasted to thousands of individuals. In doing so, insights into concerns for what climate change means and how action can and should be realized provide a wealth of knowledge for informing solutions. These solutions lie within us— how we perceive our risk, our will to implement lasting behavior change, and the ability Book Review Essay","PeriodicalId":12757,"journal":{"name":"Great Plains Quarterly","volume":"43 1","pages":"104 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46687281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}