Great Plains Studies

This fifth volume of the History of the Prairie West Series contains a broad range of articles spanning the1870s to the present and examines the mostly unexplored place of women in the history of Canada’s Prairie Provinces. From “Spinsters Need Not Apply” to “Negotiating Sex: Gender in the Ukrainian Bloc Settlement, “women’s roles in politics, law, agriculture, labour, and journalism are explored to reveal a complex portrait of women struggling to find safety, have careers, raise children, and be themselves in an often harsh environment. Launched in 2008, the History of the Prairie West Series is comprised of the very best historical articles previously published in the scholarly journal Prairie Forum.

While historians broadly agree that the US Homestead Act of 1862 allowed white settlers to take over the ancestral lands of Native nations, research rarely goes beyond the scope of individual case studies to map out how exactly Indigenous dispossession and homesteading intersected. The how, where and when of this relation has more commonly been assumed in the research literature than explored in any substance. This article offers a critical appraisal of recent interpretations and presents new evidence to make sense of the general relationship between homesteading and Native dispossession.

This essay explores the history of the South Dakota Commission on the Status of Women in the 1970s and, in turn, the broader transformation of feminist politics in the upper Midwest. It will soon be published as a chapter in "The Plains Political Tradition, Volume 3" (SD Historical Society Press).

Technological innovations in the early twentieth century helped to forge a new family dynamic that provided opportunities for women of the Great Plains to explore art, literature and music. Not only were these innovations instrumental in providing avenues for cultural exploration that had otherwise been marginalized in the daily life of women and their families, their introduction in the rural homes of the Great Plains were representative of a national, cultural shift from a nascent to modern lifestyle. Some of these technological innovations were critical to augmenting women’s labor in the rural home, providing her and the family with increased time for cultural and social pursuits. While scholarship has been devoted to the impact of technological innovations in the home such as electricity, modern appliances or implements on the daily life and labors of rural women in the early twentieth century, Edison’s phonograph has been somewhat undervalued. Mari Sandoz’s posthumous work, The Christmas of the Phonograph Records, A Recollection, provides a strong illustration of the impact of Edison’s musical innovation on a rural home in early twentieth century America—and furthermore is representative of how an innovation was capable of changing the rural household dynamic. This research will explore the impact of the phonograph on the American pastoral family in the first decade of the twentieth century, and provide a critical review of Sandoz’s work as the theme.

The paper examines Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County from the perspective of the Indian heritage and how it cohabits with the Weston family, arguing that they both belong to the same chronotope of the Plains. We explain what " the Plains " is and how its " virus " affects the Weston family which is virtually falling apart after Beverly's suicide which sets the plot in motion. The colonial history of the Osage county is important for the present of all its inhabitants. The local Indians can be perceived as the Other, but the character of Johnna, the Cheyenne housemaid, shows that she can tacitly influence the lives of the Westons and is more close to them as originally believed. The fact is that they share the same chronotope and it is precisely this time-space trait of their lives that brings them together, symbolized in the final scene when Johnna and the family's matriarch, Violet sing together.

Introduction: The current narratives about Black people migrating from the South to America’s western frontier at the turn of the Twentieth Century fundamentally fail to capture the full nature of the extraordinary undertaking Black migrants endured with both great success and failure. Exoduster was a pervasive term that characterizes Black migration during the late Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century. The theme of Exoduster literature filtered the activities of Black people
through the lens of fear. The “exodus” captured the idea that Black people migrated to escape the horrors of racist subjugation and violence indicative of Southern politics and culture. Often stories of All-Black Towns describe a promised land—one ordained by God and predetermined for the refugees. These scholarly narratives imply Black inferiority or lacking control over their fate.
Narratives about frontier spaces reflect peoples’ entrepreneurship, opportunism, and grit. However, compared to the narratives focused on White frontiersmen, Black peoples within the same period and in the same spaces appear feckless side notes to the historical trajectory of history. Blackdom’s history offers the opportunity to construct a new narrative that allows for the further expansion in the study of Black People of the West with the use of a new conceptual framework. Afro-Frontierism.

(Abridged) Tattooing across the Great Plains provided a ritual means by which to enhance one’s status and access to supernatural power. This spiritual energy was embodied in specific forms of corporeal iconography, the human bodies
that absorbed it, and especially the tattooing bundles from which such designs were created. Because these ancestral toolkits served as the primary repository for the transfer of sacred power, this chapter will examine the properties, significance, and use of tattooing bundles with specific reference to traditional Eastern Plains religion and society through an exploratory narrative based on studies of associative material culture and ethnographic sources. My focus on this geographical region of the plains is guided by
necessity, since it is here that we find the most detailed records of tattooing preserved in long-neglected published and unpublished sources. Through describing this largely understudied world of material and visual culture, I seek to expand not only our knowledge of traditional tattooing instruments from the plains but also indigenous body art and the belief systems that inspired it.

The chronicles of the Coronado expedition of 1541 record the presence of two groups inhabiting the Llano Estacado region of the southern High Plains. These groups, referred to as Querechos and Teyas, were prototypic Plains nomads, specializing in the hunting and processing of bison, whose products they traded to the Pueblo farmers of the Southwest for a variety of agricultural staples and craft items. Recent studies of archaeological remains in the Texas Panhandle have led to the recognition of two distinct protohistoric occupations, known as the Tierra Blanca and Garza complexes. The possible identifica tion of these complexes with the Querechos and Teyas of the Coronado narratives is discussed, as is their relationship to historic Athapaskan and Caddoan peoples of the region. The significance of these inter pretations to the study of protohistoric Plains-Pueblo interaction is also analyzed.

Published in 1985 and written to be accessible for general audiences, this complete version of  Peoples of Prehistoric South Dakota goes back roughly fourteen thousand years to introduce the first people to live in present-day South Dakota. They left behind a fascinating record. Archaeologists have done more than 30 years of research since publications, so some archaeological constructions about the past undoubtedly have changed. Some approaches and word choices have also changed, even the term “prehistoric” in the title. Readers should realize that Native peoples had their own histories that may or may not be the same as those archaeologists construct. Realize also that contemporary tribal names are not the same as the terms archaeologists use for the ancient peoples.
Peoples of Prehistoric South Dakota spans the time from the mammoth hunters to the coming of the first white people in the eighteenth century. It describes the environment of the Great Plains and the tools and adaptations that these early Indians made in response to it. Each major cultural tradition, along with representative artifacts, is discussed and illustrated. The final chapter challenges readers to become responsible for protection of the archaeological sites that contain this precious heritage.
The text not only describes archaeological techniques and the information that results from them but also points out the limits of archaeology and the varieties of interpretation that can result.

This paper, through an examination of history, challenges the notion of mutuality in the processes that dispossessed Metis, as well as Indigenous peoples more broadly, of their lands following Canada's 1867 Confederation. The Metis scrip system is explored in depth, within the contexts of Canadian colonization that produced its circumstances before, during, and following this event of systematized hegemony.

All women have much to gain from understanding women whose very definition of liberation and power may differ greatly from their own. Billson explores the lives of women in seven distinct cultural communities in Canada --Iroquois, Blood, Inuit, Mennonite, Jamaican, Chinese, and Ukrainian --and reveals how their roles and the balance of power between men and women have shifted as their communities have moved from traditional to more contemporary lifestyles. The main purpose of my research is to uncover some of that scattered data with particular attention to the question of how gender roles and power relations between men and women have changed within these distinct cultural communities in Canada. The research has already led to the creation of a new methodology and will generate theories of social change, with implications for Canadian public policy.

Photographs of Native Americans taken by Frank A. Rinehart at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898 were then and continue to be part of the construction of indigenous identities, both by Anglo-Americans and Natives. This thesis analyzes the ramifications of Rinehart’s portraits and those of his peers as well as Native American artists in the 20th and 21st centuries who have sought to re-appropriate these images to make them empowering icons of individual or tribal identity rather than erasure of culture.
This thesis comprises two sections. In the first section, the analysis is focused on the historical functioning of the Rinehart photographs taken at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898. The second section turns to a contemporary reading of the Rinehart images and other images like them. This includes an analysis of the author’s relationship with the photograph of an ancestor who was present at the Exhibition, as well as an examination of a piece by the performance artist, James Luna. The latter section relies heavily on Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, through which identity is formed by traumas inherited by succeeding generations, often through the vehicle of family portraits.

As the contemporary United States and Canada face unprecedented
pipeline protests, and many citizens question the ecological
impacts of these energy arteries, exploring the environmental
history of these infrastructures offers a timely case study. This chapter argues that the historical geography of the Great Plains facilitated the innovation and expansion of the world’s most capacious hydrocarbon
pipeline system. In turn, the construction and endurance of this
system had profound implications for the peoples and environment
of the Great Plains. These developments transformed
the Great Plains into the nexus of North American energy
mobility and created today’s powerful and increasingly controversial
system.

El objetivo de este ensayo es aceptar una de las proposiciones del profesor Peter Turchin en su artículo "A Theory for Formation of Large Empires" y someterla a un estudio un poco más exhaustivo para observar si es posible dilucidar el alcance y validez de esta teoría de formación de imperios. Sin embargo, sería también de utilidad aprovechar esta ocasión para realizar un debate metodológico, sobre los límites de la disciplina histórica y su situación con respecto al resto de ciencias.

A recent study (Cook, Ault, and Smerdon 2015) predicts a decade-long megadrought in the second half of the 21st century, and scientists (Steward, et al. 2013) warn that the Ogallala aquifer will be depleted by 2060. These views suggest that the future of farming in the Southwest and Central Plains looks bleak. How much longer will farming communities in this region be able to survive? Will farmers’ adaptability to environmental changes triumph once more, or is the damage caused by poor water management practices and climate change irreversible?

While Olivella beads are a common component of archaeological sites in California, and were widely traded in prehistory, no method has been developed to trace individual beads to a point of origin. This study examines the potential of stable carbon and oxygen isotopes to source Olivella beads from the Pacific coast. The study shows that 1) the oxygen isotopic composition of modern Olivella biplicata shells faithfully varies with ambient sea surface temperature and local upwelling, lending themselves to sourcing studies; 2) oxygen isotope ratios in modern shells can be used to identify shells that grow north versus south of Point Conception, California; and 3) shell carbon isotope ratios may further subdivide these two regions into more spatially restricted source zones.

The Great Plains of the United States has undergone extensive land-use and land-cover change in the past 150 years, with much of the once vast native grasslands and wetlands converted to agricultural crops, and much of the unbroken prairie now heavily grazed. Future land-use change in the region could have dramatic impacts on ecological resources and processes. A scenario-based modeling framework is needed to support the analysis of potential land-use change in an uncertain future, and to mitigate potentially negative future impacts on ecosystem processes. We developed a scenario-based modeling framework to analyze potential future land-use change in the Great Plains. A unique scenario construction process, using an integrated modeling framework, historical data, workshops, and expert knowledge, was used to develop quantitative demand for future land-use change for four IPCC scenarios at the ecoregion level. The FORE-SCE model ingested the scenario information and produced spatially explicit land-use maps for the region at relatively fine spatial and thematic resolutions. Spatial modeling of the four scenarios provided spatial patterns of land-use change consistent with underlying assumptions and processes associated with each scenario. Economically oriented scenarios were characterized by significant loss of natural land covers and expansion of agricultural and urban land uses. Environmentally oriented scenarios experienced modest declines in natural land covers to slight increases. Model results were assessed for quantity and allocation disagreement between each scenario pair. In conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Biological Carbon Sequestration project, the scenario-based modeling framework used for the Great Plains is now being applied to the entire United States.

Between 1854 and 1861, the struggle between pro-and anti-slavery factions over Kansas Territory captivated Americans nationwide and contributed directly to the Civil War. Combining political, social, and military history, Bleeding Kansas contextualizes and analyzes prewar and wartime clashes in Kansas and Missouri and traces how these conflicts have been remembered ever since. Michael E. Woods’s compelling narrative of the Kansas-Missouri border struggle embraces the diverse perspectives of white northerners and southerners, women, Native Americans, and African Americans. This wide-ranging and engaging text is ideal for undergraduate courses on the Civil War era, westward expansion, Kansas and/or Missouri history, nineteenth-century US history, and other related subjects. Supported by primary source documents and a robust companion website, this text allows readers to engage with and draw their own conclusions about this contentious era in American History.

Drawing from a combination of archival and ethnographic evidence, this article examines historic and contemporary land tenure issues within a single county in southwestern Oklahoma. Specifi cally, we look at the way in which bureaucratic control has created a system that, while originally and ostensible intended to protect the " rights " of American Indian landowners, in fact functions to restrict, undermine, and redirect " access " to those lands, oft en to the economic benefi t of non-Indian farmers and ranchers. We consider how the leasing system administered by the Anadarko Agency of the Bureau of Indian Aff airs generates a " bundle of powers " that creates profound barriers to American Indian access to their own property. At work in the BIA's bundle of powers over access to this land are a host of actors and institutions, both contemporary and historic, that have worked together to shape the social relations that give rise to the current alienation from and dispossession of Oklahoma's Native-owned lands from their intended benefi ciaries. Indeed, this tenuous situation is refl ective of complexities attending continual retrenchments and revisions of federal Indian land policy— periodic reassertions of bureaucratic authority and control that reposition actors in perennially shift ing sociolegal relationalities. We seek if not to disentangle these relationships, then to at least render them visible and thus open to debate and intervention.