University Of Nebraska Research Articles

Private Aid, Political Activism: American Medical Relief to Spain and China, 1936–1949 by Aelwen D. Wetherby

Reviewed by: Private Aid, Political Activism: American Medical Relief to Spain and China, 1936–1949 by Aelwen D. Wetherby David Forsythe Aelwen D. Wetherby. Private Aid, Political Activism: American Medical Relief to Spain and China, 1936–1949. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2017. vii + 240 pp. Ill. $65.00 (978-0-8262-2107-0). This book chronicles in considerable detail how certain Americans mobilized to provide humanitarian assistance in the violent conflicts engulfing both Spain and China starting in the 1930s. Believing that their government and the affiliated American Red Cross were not being sufficiently active, these American citizens decided in favor of politicized assistance to particular fighting factions abroad. None of the three organizations studied here, one active in Spain and two in China, lasted beyond the targeted conflicts. Any broader influence from the three agencies remains slight. But the author believes they represent “an important story of the more complex internationalism of the U.S. in the 1930s and the development of new standards of aid in conflict” (p. 176). The author, Aelwen D. Wetherby, is associated with the Oak Ridge Institute, a unit of the U.S. Department of Energy, and is an occasional lecturer at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. This book stemmed from her doctoral dissertation at Oxford University. She focuses on the American Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy (AMBASD), the American Medical Bureau for Aid to China (ABMAC), and the China Aid Council (CAC). She lays great stress on the fact that each organization made little pretense of pursuing nonpoliticized assistance. Rather, commitment to a particular fighting party was evident. The chosen title of AMBASD made clear that its concerns were in support of the Spanish elected government rather than with the fascist rebels under the [End Page 221] leadership of Francisco Franco. She does not emphasize the point, however, that on the side of the democratic government one found various communist factions that had little commitment to democracy and spent much of their time fighting each other, and the social democrats, but not always the fascist opposition. On the other hand in the ABMAC one found Americans, some prominent, who committed to the Chinese nationalists under the corrupt and repressive Chiang Kai-shek and were bitterly opposed to the communists under Mao Zedong. By comparison, the CAC was most active in northwest China where its aid programs largely benefitted those under the control of precisely the Chinese communists. Not to put too fine a point on things, two of these organizations were left of center and one on the right. Wetherby makes much of the fact that the American Red Cross (ARC), chartered by Congress but linked to a global network, was supposedly governed by key Red Cross principles endorsing neutrality, impartiality, and independence. These plus the norm of humanity were supposed to exclude politics. She is on target when she writes that “the line between political conviction and humanitarian idealism has historically been difficult to define” (p. 7). She might have noted that in the 1920s when the American Henry Davison was urging the ARC to be active in Europe, and when he wanted a new League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to dominate that global humanitarian network, he and the ARC were anything but neutral. Coming from Wall Street, Davison was a strong anticommunist who saw European postwar disorder as benefitting the Bolsheviks in Moscow. The ARC was much interested in helping White Russian refugees fleeing Lenin and his comrades. That organization made clear it would do nothing to help build up medical facilities in the Soviet Union. Then as now, Red Cross neutral humanitarian assistance was, to a great extent, left to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, the founding Red Cross agency whose all-Swiss governing board increased prospects for—but did not guarantee—neutral humanitarian action in violent politics. Insofar as the three citizen groups studied in this book saw the ARC as too timid in Spain and China, that situation had more to do with American isolationism than with the purported neutrality of the ARC. There is no major study of the ARC and the ICRC in Geneva, but such a...

Comanche Marker Trees of Texas by Steve Houser, Linda Pelon, Jimmy W. Arterberry

Reviewed by: Comanche Marker Trees of Texas by Steve Houser, Linda Pelon, Jimmy W. Arterberry Daniel R. Uden Comanche Marker Trees of Texas. By Steve Houser, Linda Pelon, and Jimmy W. Arterberry. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. ix + 186 pp. Figures, references, contributors, index. $35.00 flexbound. Comanche Marker Trees of Texas is a collaborative work by Steve Houser (owner of Arborilogical Services, Inc.), Linda Pelon (Professor of Anthropology at McLennan Community College), and Jimmy W. Arterberry (Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Comanche Nation) that traces the continuing journey of the authors and their collaborators to identify and certify Comanche marker trees in the southern Great Plains. This book is divided into three parts. Part 1 gives necessary background information on Comanche marker trees—what they are, what they are for, and who they are for—as well as a detailed description of the marker tree identification process developed by the authors. Part 2 deals with the biology of Comanche marker trees, describing the indicators and effects of the human practice of tree-bending and how it differs from the natural (non-human) bending of trees. In Part 3, profiles (including photographs) of certified Comanche marker trees are presented. The first marker tree certification took place in 1997, and a total of six trees had been certified at the time of this book’s publication in 2016, with more since. Hundreds of trees have been submitted for consideration as Comanche marker trees, and the list continues to grow. The goal of the authors and fellow volunteers is to eventually confirm or rule out each tree candidate. Their process for doing so calls for a careful examination of the tree and its place, including past and present human activity. Multiple lines of evidence (e.g., biological, cultural, historical, geological, and spatial) are combined to determine the likelihood that a tree is in fact a Comanche marker tree. Ultimately, the decision to formally certify a marker tree lies with the Comanche. The authors emphasize the foundation of their collaborative tree evaluation process in respect for the trees, land, and people. Researching and affirming Comanche marker trees is not only a time-intensive endeavor but also a time-sensitive one. Given that the minimum qualifying age for a Comanche marker tree is 144 years, and given the harsh conditions that marker trees endure on the Southern Plains, fewer and fewer marker trees remain. However, the trees, like the Comanche, persevere and [End Page 218] maintain their significance in contemporary landscapes of the Southern Plains. This book will be understandable and interesting to a wide audience. Sufficient biological, cultural, and historical information is provided to accommodate readers from different backgrounds and disciplines. As the authors note, students of Comanche land-use patterns may find the book particularly useful. Beyond being a description of Comanche marker trees or the authors’ process for identifying them, this book is a call for volunteers to join in the efforts of Comanche marker tree identification, as well as a call for submitting additional tree candidates for future consideration. More information on volunteering and tree submission can be found on the website of the Texas Historic Tree Coalition (http://www.txhtc.org/). Daniel R. Uden Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, School of Natural Resources University of Nebraska–Lincoln Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The Right Relationship: Reimagining the Implementation of Historical Treaties eds. by John Borrows and Michael Coyle

Reviewed by: The Right Relationship: Reimagining the Implementation of Historical Treaties eds. by John Borrows and Michael Coyle Jill Doerfler The Right Relationship: Reimagining the Implementation of Historical Treaties. Edited by John Borrows and Michael Coyle. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. ix + 415 pp. Contributors, index. $39.99 paper. In The Right Relationship, John Borrows and Michael Coyle bring together an impressive slate of renowned scholars to consider the fraught treaty relationship(s) between First Nations and Canada. Despite the fact the Supreme Court of Canada has described treaties as "sacred" agreements, Canada has yet to create an effective manner to address disputes regarding the meaning(s) and contemporary effects of historical treaties. The contributors provide detailed examples of when, why, and how the relationship went wrong as well as a diverse array of perspectives and ideas regarding how Canada might today change its approach to treaties and First Nations. Rather than provide a singular answer to how the relationship between First Nations and Canada might be transformed, the editors and contributors delineate an array of approaches grounded in Indigenous and non-Indigenous law. Contributors were asked to "reimagine how Canada's legal and political structure could better serve the treaty relationship that forms an inextricable part of our national story" (4). The 1764 Treaty of Niagara served a common starting point for contributors to consider how disputes about treaties might be best resolved. Most contributors gathered together twice over the course of two years, resulting in a synergy rarely seen in edited collections. In the invaluable introduction, Borrows and Coyle lay plain four central questions of the volume: [End Page 99] What role should history and historical promises play in shaping modern treaty relationships? If we seek healthy treaty relationships, what should the role of the courts be in resolving disputes, and what is their role in relation to political and public dialogue? What role, if any, should be played by Indigenous values and legal traditions in informing treaty implementation? Should we look to other forums to implement treaties and resolve disputes? (5) The rest of the introduction is organized around those foundational questions, and Borrows and Coyle briefly outline the ways in which the contributors address these questions. Faculty seeking to assign individual chapters will find the introduction especially valuable. Likewise, the introduction guides and prepares readers for the book. While much of the dialogue in the United States has centered around treaty rights, the focus in this book is relationships, asserting that it is the underlying relationship that provides context and meaning for rights. The constructive, forward-thinking approaches presented in this book make it a useful read for all Canadians—elected officials, lawyers, educators, and engaged citizens—all who are grappling with how to improve the relationship between First Nations and Canada and want to be part of creating solutions. While the relationship between the United States and Tribal nations is not part of the national narrative in the same way as the Canada and First Nations relationship is there, the book is also valuable for Americans interested in bringing a similar conversation to the forefront as well as those studying international politics. This volume is an important contribution to Indigenous-settler relations. Jill Doerfler American Indian Studies University of Minnesota–Duluth Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Natural History of the Black Hills and Badlands by Sven G. Froiland

Reviewed by: Natural History of the Black Hills and Badlands by Sven G. Froiland Robert T. Reber MSF Natural History of the Black Hills and Badlands. By Sven G. Froiland. Sioux Falls: Center for Western Studies, 2016. iii + 225 pp. Maps, figures, bibliography, appendixes. $18.00 paper. The Black Hills of South Dakota is a forested island in the grassland ocean of the Great Plains. This region is unique from its geology to the distinctive ecosystems within its border. Froiland’s book does a superb job of introducing a student of natural history to the Black Hills. The book is divided into sections that detail general, historic, and biological information. This revised edition also includes a section that describes current environmental issues within the Black Hills and another section that details the Badlands. The appendixes contain useful information that ranges from a list of rare plant species to butterfly species present. A detailed geologic map of the Black Hills also is included, with a description of the topography and geology that is quite useful. Froiland uses the typical topographic features defined by previous researchers, from the Central Hills to the Hogback Ridge. He illustrates the interesting geology in each of the topographic zones and gives the reader adequate detail regarding the geologic processes that formed these areas. The section on human history includes information about Paleoindians through the later US Army expeditions. Of particular interest is his writings about the Sioux. He gives a detailed account of their trek from the western Great Lakes to the Great Plains where they had considerable influence in the mid-19th century. The biological information section includes the most comprehensive material in the book. The early expeditions into the Black Hills are documented, and their impact on local scientific knowledge is explained. Famous botanists, from Asa Gray to Per Axel Ryberg, made major contributions to the botanical discoveries in the area. Froiland details the major vegetative zones in the Black Hills and describes the principal plant and animal species found in each zone, from the grassland foothills to the white spruce forests at higher elevations. He covers the respective faunal community in sections describing amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Each section is prefaced for the natural history of the species. He supplies a checklist of the birds that are permanent residents, summer residents, and transients in the Black Hills, which birders will appreciate. The book culminates with a section on the current environment of the Hills and another on the Badlands. Froiland deals with issues ranging from water usage to mining. These themes are commonplace to the West. In the final section, the late Dr. Ronald R. Weeden elucidated geologic and biological topics relevant to the Badlands. This book is extremely useful for any student of natural history of the Black Hills. However, some of the material is dated. The revised edition was published in 1990. Much knowledge has been gained regarding early Native Americans and their migration to North America since the initial publication. Biological communities also have changed significantly. The book mentions the mountain pine beetle and documents the decline of this insect pest during the late 1980s, but the Black Hills have experienced dramatic deforestation by the beetle in the first decade of the 21st century. The mountain lion was reported as an infrequent visitor to the Black Hills, but today a significant population of mountain lions occupies the region. Froiland reported that condition of the black-footed ferret was unknown, but ferrets were reintroduced into the Badlands in the mid-1990s. The section regarding the current environment also is somewhat dated. However, despite these few shortcomings, this book will be valuable reference for anyone who is interested in the history, geology, flora, and fauna of the Black Hills. I currently teach a summer course on the natural history of the Black Hills, and this is the required book for the course. Robert T. Reber MSF Department of Environmental Science, Public Health, and Sustainable Development Taylor University Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell by Arthur Bear Chief

Reviewed by: My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell by Arthur Bear Chief Jennifer Stern My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell. By Arthur Bear Chief. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2016. ix + 172 pp. Illustrations, appendixes. $19.95 paper. Although Arthur Bear Chief ’s My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell is clearly and concisely written, it is a difficult read. His testimony of the psychological, cultural, physical, and sexual abuse he endured as a child at the Old Sun Residential School is as heartbreaking as it is necessary. Bear Chief ’s story adds to the growing body of personal narratives to emerge from the tragic period of Canadian residential schools and American boarding schools built to erase Indigenous cultures through separating children from their communities. Children who attended these schools experienced numerous abuses, a fact that has gained public awareness in more recent decades. Bear Chief ’s narrative—and others like it—importantly brings a personal voice to an experience borne by untold thousands. Bear Chief pushes the genre by including the traumatic aftermath of his abuse, including an unsatisfying legal battle over recompense for his lost childhood. Different from many similar first-person accounts, Bear Chief ’s text provides many layers of context. First, the preface by collaborator Judy Bedford prepares the reader for the narrative that follows by introducing readers to a man with mood swings produced from revisiting his past. The story itself is both a remarkable example of Indigenous storytelling and proof of the lingering psychological damage of residential/boarding schools on their survivors. Bear Chief opens on himself as an adult writing his memoir and contemplating suicide. He goes on to relive his childhood trauma and subsequent PTSD symptomology, including alcoholism, womanizing, nightmares, and an inability to trust. The afterword by historian Frits Pannekoek discusses Canadian policies established to compensate survivors by devising a callous points-based system used to determine settlement amounts that diminished significantly after lawyers’ fees and taxation. The appendixes contain legal documents from Bear Chief ’s case as well as two impersonal form letters sent by the Anglican Church and the Canadian government apologizing for his treatment. These contexts push conversations concerning residential schools into several arenas, offering readers a more complete view of the schools’ operation and legacy than previously published. While his story contains happy moments from his residential school experience such as participation in athletics and Sunday chocolate pudding, Bear Chief suggests that positive outcomes include contending with the past on personal and communal levels. At several points, he calls on his fellow survivors to tell their stories as part of a holistic recovery process. My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell both informs uninitiated readers and acts as a [End Page 237] therapy for the smiling boy gracing its cover, the fractured man he became, and nations impacted by a horrifying legacy. Jennifer Stern American Indian Studies University of Arizona Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

A Traveler's Companion to North Dakota State Historic Sites

Reviewed by: A Traveler's Companion to North Dakota State Historic Sites Kimberly K. Porter A Traveler's Companion to North Dakota State Historic Sites. By State Historical Society of North Dakota. Bismarck: State Historical Society of North Dakota, 2014. vii + 204 pp. Illustrations, maps. $23.95 paper. A Traveler's Companion to North Dakota State Historic Sitesshould be in the glove box, backpack, library, or classroom of all North Dakotans, as well as in the hands of visitors. The handy spiral-bound book is chock full of places [End Page 114]to see and things to do in the Flickertail State. Alphabetically organized from Big Mound Battlefield State Historic Site to Writing Rock State Historic Site, A Traveler's Companionprovides context, drawings, detailed maps, and photographs—both contemporary and historic—for each of North Dakota's sixty-eight state historic sites. The text is clear: an icon denotes each location as being of potential merit to travelers seeking to explore places associated with Native Americans, the military, exploration and settlement, trade and technology, state government, or natural history. Many sites garner more than one icon. For example, the entry on Mandan's Fort Abraham Lincoln informs readers that the site should be of value to individuals interested in military history, as well as Native American history and natural wonders. An index points out areas of interest by category. For those interested in a more modern moment, travelers can opt to visit the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile site near Cooperstown. Not only does the guidebook offer directions and general information on North Dakota in the Cold War, it also provides a very basic understanding of a missile silo's components. Moreover, the volume offers a listing of facilities operated by county historical societies that serve to augment the state's historic sites. And, where appropriate, travelers are directed to restrooms, campgrounds, gift shops, and museums, as well as hours of operation and applicable fees. More than a road map or a tourist brochure, A Traveler's Companionprovides historical context for the state's historic sites by placing the locale into territorial, state, or national history. It does so in accessible language that encourages continued travel and exploration. If fault is to be found, and there can be but little discerned, a map or at least a listing of sites of interest within a brief drive might be included. While no map would find universal approval, one suggesting sites to comprise a day-trip (or longer) would be useful. Also, it would be a shame to miss the Gingras Trading Post while traveling to the Pembina State Museum. Teachers, travelers, armchair historians, and those simply wondering what to do with the kids on the weekend will surely find this book worth their time and treasure. Kimberly K. Porter University of North Dakota Grand Forks, North Dakota Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Horse-and-Buggy Genius: Listening to Mennonites Contest the Modern World by Royden Loewen

Reviewed by: Horse-and-Buggy Genius: Listening to Mennonites Contest the Modern World by Royden Loewen L. Good Gingrich Horse-and-Buggy Genius: Listening to Mennonites Contest the Modern World. By Royden Loewen. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2016. vii + 238 pp. Illustrations, map, annotated bibliography, index. $27.95 CAD, $31.95 USD, paper. Loewen presents intimate and compelling testimonials from members of two distinct groups of traditional Mennonites—Old Colony Mennonites in Central and South America, and Old Order Mennonites in Ontario, Canada. The Old Order Mennonites of this research are of Swiss–South German descent, preserve their traditional language of Pennsylvania Dutch, have lived in close-knit agrarian communities in rural southern Ontario for over 200 years, and today number approximately 8,000. The estimated 100,000 Old Colony Mennonites are descendants of the Anabaptist movement in the Netherlands, and their histories of persecution, hardship, and migration are intertwined and (seemingly) endless. Today they live in (and move between) separate and largely self-contained colonies scattered throughout Mexico, Belize, Bolivia, and Paraguay, and strive to preserve their Plautdietsch language and way of life that is infused with a unique blend of Dutch, Russian, and Mexican food and culture. Despite their divergent geographic and linguistic histories, communities in these two groups of Mennonites share a religious commitment to lives of "continuity, simplicity, and obedience" (9). The "remarkable coincidence" (5) that identifies both Old Order and Old Colony Mennonites as "horse-and-buggy" people goes beyond outer expressions of antimodernity, as their accounts reveal similar lifestyle ideals and religious traditions that "emphasize the community over the individual, the local over the nation, simplicity over profit, and peace over violence" (4). Ironically, political borders and "earthly kingdoms" are used to frame the stories of two peoples whose practices and beliefs transcend such boundaries. The selection of these two groups of horse-and-buggy Mennonites is based on a shared link with Canada, yet this geopolitical connection is tenuous. The Canadian Old Order Mennonites are tied in culture and kin to the thousands of horse-and-buggy Old Order Mennonites of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—communities that are curiously omitted from this study. The Canadian story for horse-and-buggy Old Colony Mennonites is limited to brief moments in their migratory history, and represents a "corrupting" land (201) where threats to their antimodern convictions drove them south in the 1920s, and where their colony lifestyle practices (including use of horse and buggy) must be forfeited when poverty and violence drive them back north. It is clear, through his own admission and [End Page 122] in his retelling of the stories, that Loewen's affection and affiliation favor the Old Colony Mennonites. This is not necessarily a weakness or flaw of this work, as all researchers, even historians, must write from our own peculiar perspective and bias. However, the uneven attention given the two groups, in both depth and breadth, suggests a competitive rather than comparative analysis. As a result, some distinctive features of each group are overlooked: the unique social and political structures of the Latin American colony and the Canadian farming community; differing roles, responsibilities, and status of women, due in part to dissimilar farming and livelihood practices; and widely divergent migration histories and associated meanings. Loewen urges the reader to take seriously the religious convictions of these peculiar peoples, and to recognize their daily life practices as challenge to "conspicuous consumption" (219) and the isolation of individualism. In this way, the work makes an important contribution to scholarship, especially in its engaging, personal, and respectful presentation of Old Colony Mennonite narratives. Their curious practices, which are often judged to be foolish and self-defeating, are re-storied in deeply rooted religious convictions and traditions. This re-framing is instructive for encounters with all groups who hold to a worldview and preserve a lifestyle that contest dominant norms. L. Good Gingrich School of Social Work and Centre for Refugee Studies York University, Canada Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

This Land: An American Portrait by Jack Spencer

Reviewed by: This Land: An American Portrait by Jack Spencer Kat Krutak-Bickert This Land: An American Portrait. By Jack Spencer. Foreword by Jon Meacham. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. vii + 268 pp. Illustrations. $45.00 cloth. Jack Spencer's This Land: An American Portrait is a collection of photographs spanning from the West Coast to the East, the Great Plains to the Gulf. The book is Spencer's relevant and critical depiction of the changing landscape of the lower forty-eight. Spencer captures a range of activities from wild animals grazing in their undisturbed habitats to lonely storefronts—seemingly abandoned—and children wading in ankle deep beachfronts. Spencer dazzles us with his visual poetry while at the same time guiding us to look beyond his images. He explores the delicate balance struck with what our culture demands and what truly is important to lead a fulfilling life. One cannot be blamed for opening this book solely to marvel at the photographs and the wonder they elicit. Nonetheless, I urge all who gaze upon these images to read Spencer's prologue. In Spencer's written word the truth of his dissolution of the American population comes into full view. "This society," Spencer writes, "has a deepening, narcissistic, and consumer-driven neurosis that urges it members to buy something—anything—in order to fill some unidentified hole in their lives, and to get someplace—anywhere—as quickly as possible." It is here that Spencer is imploring us to slow down, to watch out for the undercurrent by which so many of us are swept away. This book is not a collection of glossy travel photos of America's most treasured attractions. It is a deeper look at our attitudes and the mental health of our society. It is a juxtaposition of the natural world, the manufactured world, and all the worlds that lie in between. Through [End Page 326] Spencer's words and his lens, he explores the implications of an apathetic and greedy culture—a culture that takes without asking and reaps with no consequences. The images taken in the Great Plains are as varied as the region itself. There are rolling hills of short, tall, and mixed prairie grasses, small wooden frame homes, long dirt roads enclosed by rows of corn, and flora and fauna specific to this beautiful part of the country. Much of my own youth and early adulthood was spent chasing some of these same images. With my first ever camera, an old Canon AE-1, I would ride my bike outside the city limits to try and capture an old barn or even just a single fencepost. I, like Spencer, was searching for a portal into the past. Now, more often than not, our society takes the natural world for granted, or even worse, ignores it completely. Spencer reminds us what lies outside our cities and towns while also pleading for better stewardship, conservation, and maybe even a trip to Amish Country! Kat Krutak-Bickert Great Plains Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit University of Nebraska–Lincoln Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance: Other Sides of Civil War Texas ed. by Jesus F. De La Teja

Reviewed by: Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance: Other Sides of Civil War Texas ed. by Jesus F. De La Teja Thomas Summerhill Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance: Other Sides of Civil War Texas. Edited by Jesus F. De La Teja. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. vii + 274 pp. Figures, map, tables, selected bibliography, index. $19.95 paper. Jesus F. De La Teja and the contributors to this fresh volume set out to challenge the set of mythologies that make up the Lost Cause narrative that remains a prevalent interpretation of the history of Texas in the Civil War period. They unwrap the interlocking myths about Southern white unity, Tejano disengagement, German resistance, African American passivity, and chivalry. The essays demonstrate that unionism provided an oppositional framework around which dissent could crystalize and, at times, succeed in thwarting Texas and Confederate authorities. The volume makes clear that the underlying conflicts of the Civil War years were rooted in the antebellum period and continued through Reconstruction. Also significant, Texas emerges as a unique Confederate space, shaped as much by its frontiers as by the issues of slavery and states' rights that drove the rebellion. To Confederate Texans, Indians and Mexicans were nearly as threatening as Yankees. The authors also dispel illusions that the Civil War in Texas was anything but violent, brutal, and malicious. The authors demonstrate that the Civil War, especially at the hands of Confederates on the northern frontier, became one of extermination. The primary goal of the volume, however, is to use this context to illuminate the efforts of dissenters to rally around the Union as a counter to white Confederate dominion. Tejanos, understanding fully the issues at stake, attempted to stop secession as an elite power grab. Failing in that, they found ways to resist Confederate authority throughout the war. Poor whites turned the "Big Thicket" of East Texas into a stronghold for unionists and deserters, then remained dissident voices during Reconstruction. Refugee slaves used their masters' flight to Texas to run away to achieve freedom. And prewar advocates of slavery, such as Edmund J. Davis, based on their experiences during the war, might move decisively to a unionist position and into the Republican Party. The volume might be enhanced in certain ways. For example, it would benefit from a consistent definition of Texas unionism. Most often it is portrayed as a catchall for dissenters with various agendas. Yet unionism appeared to entail common ideas about citizenship, equality, race, gender, and ethnicity that positively drew [End Page 125] historical actors to it. In addition, the emphasis on the frontier makes the near silence of Native Americans in the essays surprising; it is difficult to discern the actions they took in creating the civil war in Texas. These observations notwithstanding, the volume is an important contribution to our understanding of the Civil War in Texas and the Southwest. Thomas Summerhill Department of History Michigan State University Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

A Quiet Evolution: The Emergence of Indigenous-Local Intergovernmental Partnerships in Canada by Christopher Alcantara, Jen Nelles

Reviewed by: A Quiet Evolution: The Emergence of Indigenous-Local Intergovernmental Partnerships in Canada by Christopher Alcantara, Jen Nelles David Andrew Reece A Quiet Evolution: The Emergence of Indigenous-Local Intergovernmental Partnerships in Canada. By Christopher Alcantara and Jen Nelles. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. ix + 152 pp. Figures, tables, references, index. $24.71 cloth. For the past several decades, there has been a rapid expansion of interest in Indigenous peoples that has coincided with renewed studies of local knowledge and governance, especially in disciplines that involve natural resources. The shift in management approaches to ecosystem thinking, the explosion of “commons” research, and the wave of decolonizing movements spurred by postcolonial critique have all combined to thrust both these research areas into the spotlight. This book, A Quiet Evolution: The Emergence of Indigenous-Local Intergovernmental Partnerships in Canada, by Alcantara and Nelles, is unique and significant in its combination of these two realms: Indigenous studies and local governance. It examines an extensive dataset of agreements between municipal and Indigenous governments in order to understand the nature of the agreements and the factors that may have influenced their shaping. The book is specific and thorough, yet its content could be diversely applied across a range of disciplines. A Quiet Evolution is laid out in a fairly standard academic manner. I found this to be one of the many strengths of the book, as the authors go to great lengths to make it clear and concise. The introduction explains the intent of the study, the background of relevant literature, and the progression of the content. The first two chapters then elaborate on the data, classifying the 332 formal agreements using a typology scheme, and introduce the theoretical framework that will be used to analyze the factors that may have shaped the type of relationship between the community governments. This framework is divided into six factors on an axis of capacity (a community’s ability to act) and willingness (a community’s desire to act). To apply the framework, the authors construct a four-type relationship matrix to explain how the governments interact with one another. Chapters 3–6 focus in on four case studies, each one illustrating a different portion of the relationship matrix. These cases are carefully elaborated on and supported by a wealth of qualitative information from primary sources. Finally, the authors conclude with an evaluation of how the six factors affected the cases either positively or negatively, which was probably the only aspect of the study that I felt was somewhat vague and forced. Some findings were more surprising than others, but all of them were grounded in solid evidence. Overall, the book was pleasantly readable and engaging. This book makes use of mainly practical social theory concepts such as collective action, institutional capacity, community capital, and others to explain how various Indigenous-local agreements and relationships emerge and continue. These sorts of social frameworks frequently come with a variety of assumptions and oversimplifications, but they can still be helpful in pointing out the numerous factors that need to be considered when explaining collective interactions. Though the book is squarely situated within community-related literature and public policy concepts, it could also be useful in a wide variety of social disciplines. The authors are extremely careful not to make normative judgments, but rather “leave it to others to . . . situate it within the normative debates” (140). However, they do venture briefly into decolonization and some of the issues faced by Indigenous peoples. Overall, A Quiet Evolution is a rigorous and thorough contribution to the literature and a promising model for research in these rapidly evolving fields. David Andrew Reece Geography Department University of Missouri–Columbia Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River by Matthew Salafia

Reviewed by: Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River by Matthew Salafia Vernon L. Volpe Matthew Salafia, Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 330 pp. $24.95. Harriet Beecher Stowe penned the most memorable image of an Ohio River boundary between slavery and freedom in her tale of Eliza braving the ice floes of the frozen river with little Harry in her arms. Other writers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Frederick Law Olmsted helped to create the stark contrast between enterprising free states such as Ohio and “indolent” slave states such as Kentucky. Yet in Slavery’s Borderland, Matthew Salafia (North Dakota State University) presents an intriguing alternative image of the Ohio River country and its unique status within a dividing Union. Not precisely a definitive border between “freedom” and slavery, the Ohio River did differentiate a region while shaping an ongoing debate concerning the legal status of blacks on both sides of the river. The strength of Salafia’s analysis lies in its localist orientation. He largely avoids generalizations and stereotypes to examine actual evidence, often in the form of circumstances and testimony contained in various legal disputes and rulings (some well-known, others quite obscure). These first-person accounts reveal a great deal about how white and black residents interpreted free status or bondage in the Ohio River region. He also compares vital statistics (free black or slave population, land values and production, etc.) in showing a surprising amount of “overlap” between “cross-river” communities, or counties situated on opposing sides of the river. The result is an original (and somewhat surprising) presentation of the Ohio River region that deserves attention from regional scholars and students of the sectional conflict alike. Conceding that the Ohio River remained a border between rather distinct states (if not societies), Salafia highlights the contradictions and ambiguity white and black, free and slave faced in the Ohio country. (He includes Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky in this portrait while setting Illinois mostly aside.) Surely tensions, and potential conflicts, remained but instead Salafia illustrates how (in the end) accommodation among the white residents largely held sway. Even Kentucky adhered to its favored self-image as a “moderate” slave state where the peculiar institution remained “mild” on its path to a natural if gradual death. As war emerged, Kentucky’s predictable (but doomed) efforts at neutrality failed as the state resisted emancipation while only “joining” the Confederacy once the war ended. Residents of the region would not know this result as they strove, literally [End Page 57] for decades, to resolve the inherent conflicts in a river system divided by competing laws and loyalties. The author is quite sensitive to the demands of geography (given the powerful presence of the Ohio), the role played by emerging markets and new technology (chiefly the steamboat), as well as developments owing to the passage of time. The result, he proposes, was a regional outlook (chiefly among the white residents to be sure) that rejected extreme positions, preferred compromise within the Union, and did not much benefit the black population, free or slave. In the end, the region contributed little to the rise of sectional discord. Neither did it resolve the national crisis over slavery and racial inequality. Thanks to Salafia’s diligent research and careful analysis we now have a better understanding of how the Ohio River created a “borderland” with rather distinctive characteristics and contributions. But his work also demonstrates how complex such a regional history can be. On the one hand the Ohio River counties often displayed similar qualities and supported a familiar outlook. Yet conditions and attitudes in southern Ohio or Indiana (not to mention Cincinnati or Louisville) could vary quite remarkably from those in the northern region of these states. But neither was the “mid-West” New England or the Deep South. The Ohio River did indeed mean different things to different people. Vernon L. Volpe University of Nebraska at Kearney Kearney, Nebraska Copyright © 2018 Paul Mokrzycki Renfro

North Dakota's Geologic Legacy: Our Land and How It Formed by John P. Bluemle

Reviewed by: North Dakota's Geologic Legacy: Our Land and How It Formed by John P. Bluemle Lydia Tackett North Dakota's Geologic Legacy: Our Land and How It Formed. By John P. Bluemle. Fargo: North Dakota State University Press, 2016. vii + 376 pp. Maps, charts, photographs, notes, sources and recommended reading, index. $39.95 paper. North Dakota's unique geologic story is primarily that of glaciers, representing one of the youngest glacially shaped regions in the country. The importance of Cenozoic glacial research is enormous—the climatic shifts that resulted in the growth and recession of "Ice Age" glaciers provide vital information about long-term trends in order to understand and predict how our climate will change in the near future. North Dakota is one of the best regions in the country to recognize glacial geomorphology; however, the landforms created by glacial erosion, deposition, and subsidence can be subtle and difficult to identify for nongeologists, and many common features to the North Dakotan landscape which formed as a direct result of glacial movement are not widely recognized as attributable to glaciers. In North Dakota's Geologic Legacy, John Bluemle skillfully describes various North Dakota regions that have been sculpted by glaciers or blanketed by their sediments in language that can be understood by any reader. In addition to the glacial features, Bluemle relates peripheral, underlying geologic features which connect to surrounding states and Canada: the Bakken basin to the north, the Badlands to the southwest, the buttes of the Cannonball and Hell Creek formations to the south, and the younger Red River Valley to the east. Each of [End Page 96] these structures can be related to geologic histories in a broader context, linking more familiar, widespread geologic features with the glacial history of the state. Bluemle divides the state into several large swaths to describe the formation and subsequent erosion of each region, providing color photographs of specific landforms that illustrate the processes he has outlined. Many descriptions and photographs are accompanied by charming personal stories of his time as state geologist of North Dakota, interacting with people in the state over the course of his decades-long career. In this way, the book is sometimes like a memoir, and anyone who has spent time in North Dakota will recognize the characters he describes. Bluemle's photographs of the region are often spectacular, and he typically includes information about how to get to the off-road features and what they look like today, if significantly altered since the taking of the image. The book also includes excellent diagrams that would be useful to any teacher of geomorphology or related topics. North Dakota's Geologic Legacy strikes a great balance between science, exploration, and history of the state of North Dakota, and is a great companion book for those looking to learn more about the region. Lydia Tackett Department of Geosciences North Dakota State University Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Trespassing across America: One Man’s Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike across the Heartland by Ken Ilgunas

Reviewed by: Trespassing across America: One Man’s Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike across the Heartland by Ken Ilgunas Patrick Dobson Trespassing across America: One Man’s Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike across the Heartland. By Ken Ilgunas. New York: Blue Rider Press, 2016. 264 pp. Map, illustrations, bibliography. $16.00 paper. In 1995 I walked from Kansas City to Helena, Montana, and canoed home on the Missouri River. Great Plains denizens, particularly those of modest or little means, proved to be the most generous and open, albeit hard-headed and sometimes backward-looking, people I’ve met in my lifetime. Ken Ilgunas now reports Great Plains dwellers’ character has changed little in the intervening years. Trespassing across America is, on the surface, the story of Ilgunas’s quest to follow the controversial Keystone XL pipeline through the heart of the Great Plains from the Alberta tar sands to the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. To pursue his journey, he hikes the pipeline route as closely as he can. Finding roads often far from the pipeline path, he hops fences, at first with reservation and then unabashedly. Meanwhile, locals open their homes to him and warn him that landowners let rifles do the talking. He finds, however, that landowners forgive more than they reprimand (or shoot) and almost everyone offers more than Ilgunas asks. While informative about the various aspects of the pipeline controversy, Ilgunas’s story is an exquisite travel memoir celebrating individual effort and Great Plains social diversity. It shows us the people of the Great Plains in all their wealth and poverty, pride and tatters. It walks the line between love of the people he meets and criticism of their (and our society’s) small-world views. Trespassing is as much celebration of Great Plains life as it is a cautionary tale. Ilgunas demonstrates acuity in several levels of narration. Relating the history and background of the XL pipeline and the intricacies of climate science, he contemplates the intersection between human and nature. He weaves technology and Great Plains homespun wisdom into the 1,915-mile trip. Detailing the individuals with whom he forms relationships, he also shows cultural differences between provinces and states. He also informs us enough of his own travails, successes, and humor to make him an apt and welcome travel partner. Ilgunas finds that for all their generosity, strength, and individual spirit, many Great Plains dwellers sacrifice “local” thinking for corporate-brewed nostrums, reactionary political talking points, and groupthink. He finds many reject climate science and sidestep social good for jobs propaganda, pointing out the pipeline promises to create only about 30 full-time positions along its route. “What happens to our country’s core will affect the rest of the body,” Ilgunas writes (79). He shows us the healthy and diseased aspects of Great Plains life, and hopes the negatives don’t constitute an incurable infection. Ilgunas begins and ends Trespassing an opponent of the pipeline. But this is no polemic. He enlightens us about the complications of the Keystone XL debate, the interests involved, and the pipeline’s implications for global warming. He holds little hope for a solution to the increasing greenhouse gas emissions the pipeline will enable. But he believes that in the long term, Americans, and perhaps the world, will figure their way out of a tangled and urgent conundrum—How do people addicted to oil maintain their habit and keep from smothering themselves? [End Page 209] Patrick Dobson Johnson County Community College Overland Park, Kansas Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The Farmer’s Game: Baseball in Rural America by David Vaught

Reviewed by: The Farmer’s Game: Baseball in Rural America by David Vaught Charles Klinetobe David Vaught, The Farmer’s Game: Baseball in Rural America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. 232 pp. $29.95. In The Farmer’s Game: Baseball in Rural America, David Vaught examines the role of baseball in rural communities. Vaught argues that baseball and baseball historians have overly focused on the Major Leagues which has, in turn, overly focused their attention on the big cities and thereby improperly excluded small towns and rural spaces from our understanding of the history and evolution of the game. “Rural baseball,” writes Vaught, “needs to be understood in its rural context, not as a by-product of the developing urban-professional game” (11). Vaught makes no claim to the slender book being comprehensive or capturing the complexity of how baseball expresses the myriad of communities and cultures in rural America. He instead defines the book as “exploratory and suggestive rather than definitive or comprehensive.” (10) As such, the book is organized around six wholly independent essays exploring the role of baseball in rural communities. The most compelling of these examines baseball in Texas cotton country where it became important, and imbued with different meanings, in German, Czech, Latino, and Anglo communities. Vaught’s research is impressive. He provides more than forty pages of notes for 151 pages, of text, along with a bibliographical essay. He demonstrates an immersive command of a variety of sources, including court cases and small town newspapers. For more recent subjects, such as Bob Feller and Gaylord Perry, Vaught also conducted a number of interviews. Vaught points to Jules Tygiel’s maxim that to write good baseball history, one must first take their eye off the ball (150). Unfortunately, at times, the ball can get somewhat lost which can leave the book somewhat uneven. Vaught can write, often quite wonderfully, of the intertwined lives of the Coopers and Doubledays in upstate New York and the economic transformations brought by the Erie Canal, but there is nary a baseball to be seen. This leaves the posited connection between baseball and communities feeling sometimes tenuous, particularly as the myth of baseball being created by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown has been long discredited, though Vaught indulges in a speculative journey to reduce it to a possible misunderstanding. This can also be a reflection of the lack of available sources, which may also serve to push the study to the urban and professional games. Furthermore, while Vaught argues that rural [End Page 104] baseball needs to be understood on its own terms, further exploration of its connections to the urban game may be warranted. Vaught writes that in 1877, a year before the formation of the National League, players in rural Texas were already emulating the style of traveling professionals who had barnstormed through the region. Also, in the early urban and professional game, teams and players who were unsophisticated or crude in their play were referred to as “country.” This may not be a comfortable connection between the urban and rural game, but it is worthy of exploration. At their best, sports are an expression of community and culture. In The Farmer’s Game, David Vaught explores this expression in a handful of rural communities. While it is neither comprehensive or final, it is a worthy contribution. Charles Klinetobe University of Nebraska–Omaha Omaha, Nebraska Copyright © 2018 Paul Mokrzycki Renfro

Plainview: The Enigmatic Paleoindian Artifact Style of the Great Plains ed. by Vance T. Holliday

Reviewed by: Plainview: The Enigmatic Paleoindian Artifact Style of the Great Plains ed. by Vance T. Holliday Sara Anderson Plainview: The Enigmatic Paleoindian Artifact Style of the Great Plains. Edited by Vance T. Holliday, Eileen Johnson, and Ruthann Knudson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2017. ix + 264 pp. Figures, tables, references, index. $70.00 cloth. Plainview: The Enigmatic Paleoindian Artifact Style of the Great Plains is an important collection of work for the archaeological community, including students and advocationalists. It may not be best suited for the general audience but certainly is a useful resource for anyone interested in the late Paleoindian period, specifically of the Great Plains. Holliday, Johnson, and Knudson are some of the principal authorities in this field and have done a great job of gathering experts to collaborate on this collection of work. By detailing the nature of the Plainview view site near Plainview, Texas, the authors are able to illustrate the complex and difficult nature of archaeological excavations through time, site preservation and management, and artifact analysis. As time and technologies have progressed and improved, the field of archaeology has been able to reexamine early classifications of sites, artifact types, and chronologies; this book does that very thing and provides a clarification of this Paleoindian point type that for so long has been a catch-all for morphologically similar lancelet points. Although the book focuses on archaeological sites in the Great Plains, chapters 7 through 10 discuss sites and their point assemblages from the Southwest and the Great Basin. Therefore, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the earliest peoples of North America in general. Specifically, the chapter “The Plainview [End Page 224] Assemblage in Context,” by Ruthann Knudson, is a useful comparison of Plainview versus other point assemblages. The chapters as independent articles or the book as a whole would be useful and beneficial in collegiate course work, such as Plains Archaeology, North American Archaeology, and Lithic Technologies. The editors have amassed, in one book, archaeological investigations that will be informative and educationally necessary for future researchers for some time. Not only does this work clearly demonstrate point type delineations and morphological specifications of Plainview against other Paleoindian points, but also features analyses and discussions focused on the fauna assemblage of Plainview. Clear photographs of the early excavations and artifact images, beautifully illustrated point type morphologies, and an array of tables, maps, and figures are integrated throughout and visually contribute to the shared knowledge. The authors of this book provide new in-depth analyses and elaborate on earlier understandings of this “enigmatic” point type. The Plainview site is a critical archaeological site of the Great Plains and has much to offer our current understandings of Paleoindians of the region. However, the authors clearly demonstrate the difficulty of reinvestigating this site as the preservation and accessibility is poor. The book stresses the significance the Plainview site and how the point type offers a greater understanding of some of the first peoples of the Great Plains and the North American continent. Sara Anderson Anthropology Department University of Nebraska–Lincoln Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature ed. by Monica Gagliano, John R. Ryan, Patricia Vieira

Reviewed by: The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature ed. by Monica Gagliano, John R. Ryan, Patricia Vieira Benjamin Vogt, PhD The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature. Edited by Monica Gagliano, John R. Ryan, and Patricia Vieira. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. vii + 302 pp. Figures, contributors, index. $30.00 paper. If we’re going to revive a passion, love, and stewardship for this world, we’re going to need new ways of speaking with that world—and in understanding how it speaks with itself. This anthology of thoughtful essays ultimately asks us to listen as a first step—to rethink what sentience and respect and compassion look like when we open ourselves to plant life separate from us. While it uses a lot of scientific terminology and academese—this is not a collection for beginners—this reader is enthralled by the conversation being had. The editors put together a wonderfully concise introduction that outlines the scientific, philosophical, and literary exploration into the language of plants, tracing watershed moments in the history of all three fields and of leading thinkers. The book is divided into three parts, and the final section, on literature, explores how certain authors have used plants to convey social meaning in human-only contexts. The first section, on science, delves into the nuts and bolts of mostly contemporary research on how plants “speak”—from volatile organic compounds to light to nectar to electrostatic charges. Any reader will find a lot to chew on, as we’re asked to expand our views on how plants communicate in ways similar and dissimilar to us, yet in ways still too little understood. The last essay of the first section—“Breaking the Silence,” by Monica Gagliano—serves as a wonderful bridge between the scientific discoveries of that initial section and the philosophical explorations of the second section. Gagliano’s aim is to “breathe life into a new narrative, where language is unbridled from human incarceration and its power refocused toward a more integrated perception of the world.” This thought is perhaps one of the anthology’s core themes, and Gagliano continues by saying that “meaning emerges during interactions among organisms; hence language is not a fixed property of that organism [ . . . ] but rather a truly ecological, dynamic process of relationships.” How can we de-objectify nature, and plants, and restore their dignity? [End Page 221] Luce Irigaray’s piece in the same section also stands out, particularly by championing a silence that the vegetal world teaches us, and how silence allows us the choice to hear or not hear the teaching of plants. Ultimately, this can lead to a new ethics where plants are not just objects to be used by humans. Continuing on that theme is Karen Houle’s extrapolation of the term “justice” as it relates to plant life, reflecting on the idea that how we speak of life is how we treat it or act on its behalf. Ultimately, human language may be a judgment, Houle argues, one that erases a neutrality of perception that won’t allow us to see other lives as beautiful or wonder-filled, worthy of their own existence. Such a line of reason seems particularly relevant among the Great Plains grasslands, where both plant and animal cultures are eroded by one species’s dominant language. Benjamin Vogt Monarch Gardens Lincoln, Nebraska Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Mixed Blessings: Indigenous Encounters with Christianity in Canada eds. by Tolly Bradford and Chelsea Horton

Reviewed by: Mixed Blessings: Indigenous Encounters with Christianity in Canada eds. by Tolly Bradford and Chelsea Horton Alan L. Hayes Mixed Blessings: Indigenous Encounters with Christianity in Canada. Edited by Tolly Bradford and Chelsea Horton. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017. vii + 212 pp. Contributors, index. $29.95 CAD, $32.95 USD, paper. The phrase "mixed blessings" signals that Indigenous experiences of Christianity in Canada should be seen as highly diverse, with long-term consequences that were sometimes beneficial and sometimes damaging. This theme is explored in an introduction and nine independent essays touching on a variety of periods, Indigenous nationalities, and historical figures, and reflecting different authorial points of view. Twelve authors have contributed; only two identify as Indigenous. Mixed Blessings: Indigenous Encounters with Christianity in Canada originated in a conference at the University of Saskatchewan in 2011. The conference was particularly timely, the participants knew, since Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had just begun to take stock of the legacy of the country's Indian residential schools. Indeed, the TRC saw the influence of Christianity as mixed, as Siphiwe Dube argues, the churches had run residential schools as instruments of repression and cultural assimilation, but Christian faith and caring were helping many of the survivors find healing and comfort. Dube notes that some Indigenous critics of the TRC denied any positive benefit of Christianity at all, and were dismayed that the TRC had invited the churches to participate and that its work was being shaped by Christian notions of repentance and forgiveness. The subtitle of the book is a problem, as Amanda Fehr recognizes explicitly in her chapter, and as other writers acknowledge [End Page 127] implicitly. It assumes a binary opposition between Christianity and Indigeneity, making "encounter" necessary. But did such a binary opposition ever exist? Christianity did not always come from outside the Indigenous context. Many elements of Christianity were already part of Indigenous spiritualities. Indigenous Christian evangelists and teachers often preceded the Euro-Canadian missionaries. Indeed, sometimes Jesus appeared to Indigenous peoples independently of the Europeans, as he did to the Stó:lo of British Columbia, as Fehr observes. The authors also reject other simple binary oppositions such as political and spiritual, colonizers and victims. In this postcolonial approach, the editors understand their work as following "an interpretive shift well underway in the United States." Two chapters take us to the Great Plains. Tasha Beeds shows how Edward Ahenakew (1885–1961) of Saskatchewan bridged Cree and Church of England. Fluently bilingual, he both published Cree stories and preached sermons as an Anglican priest. He was also a leading advocate for Indigenous rights through the League of Indians, until his English bishop stopped him. Jean-François Bélisle and Nicole St.-Onge rescue Louis Riel (1844–85), the rebel leader of two uprisings in the Canadian prairies, from the interpretation of English Canadian historians that his religious commitments were esoteric at best, if not lunatic. Riel's political agenda to protect Métis land rights should be joined to, not separated from, his millenarianism and his religious vision for civil government. This vision, so far from being idiosyncratic, was linked to a transnational conservative Roman Catholic movement, and it squared with the Métis experience of the Catholic Church. Like most if not all collections of essays, this one is uneven in quality, but overall it succeeds in challenging the generalizations and stereotyping that have dominated many past narratives of Christian Indigeneity in Canada. [End Page 128] Alan L. Hayes Wycliffe College University of Toronto Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Wild by Nature: North American Animals Confront Colonization by Andrea Smalley

Reviewed by: Wild by Nature: North American Animals Confront Colonization by Andrea Smalley Kerri Keller Clement Wild by Nature: North American Animals Confront Colonization. By Andrea Smalley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. ix + 324 pp. Figures, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95 paper. In Wild by Nature, Andrea Smalley asks readers to consider wild animals not simply as commodities desired by European Americans, but also as participants in and resistors to North American colonialism. With perceptive prose, Smalley examines legal codes, treaties, governmental regulations, newspapers, diaries, and colonial promotional rhetoric to cover extensive ground, venturing from the Chesapeake Bay to the Southern Plains, and from the 16th through the 19th century, to track encounters among European Americans, wild animals, and Indigenous peoples. Beaver, wolves, fish, deer, and bison assisted, stymied, and altered European Americans’ colonizing visions by influencing legal definitions of possession and stimulating conflicts between private property notions and common hunting and fishing access. Rather than passively watching as European Americans marched through the land, through their physiology and behavior patterns and their value as marketable goods, these wild animals both resisted and assisted the colonizing process and in doing so, changed the colonizers’ laws and regulations concerning wild animals and private property regimes. Wild by Nature opens with the first encounters of Europeans, in particular the English, with indigenous animals. To encourage colonization, early English promotional literature painted exotic pictures of the rich abundance of New World animals. By manipulating Old World class tensions related to elite control of hunting and possession of game, promoters highlighted the colonies’ cornucopia of wild game as free for the taking. Potential and actual colonists embraced this rhetoric, treating New World wild animals as common property and common marketable goods. In so doing, however, their competition led to legal confrontations and even violence. Smalley concentrates on instances where wild animals instigated warfare, disputes over private property and regulation, capital accumulation or loss, and Indian dispossession. Beaver pelts and white-tailed deer skins drew European Americans westward, while the threats wolves posed to livestock joined concerns about access to mobile fish to force colonizers to clarify and adapt Old World notions of private versus common property regimes and access to animals, as well as the meaning of ordered civilization. Smalley’s work has implications for the history of colonization, environmental and agricultural history, rangeland management, and the history of hunting and fishing regulation. For example, the hunting of white-tailed deer and subsequent depletion of their populations in the East led hunters such as Daniel Boone to move farther west. In their quest to provide skins for the market, Boone and other hunters violated property boundaries and Indigenous lands claims. Smalley turns next to bison, whose economic value, along with their social and feeding habits, encouraged European American occupation of the Southern Plains and incited violence, like the 1874 Red River War, which generated conflict between trespassing bison hunters, the American government, settlers, and Indigenous peoples. [End Page 215] Following bison-related violence, American legal and regulatory control solidified from the East Coast to the Southern Plains, culminating in the enclosure and attempted control of wild animals in parks and preserves in the 19th and 20th century. Smalley links her choice of species to the amount of regulatory legislation they inspired or forced colonists to change. While this makes sense, it also prioritizes creatures seen to have commercial value (or who threatened valuable livestock as was the case with wolves). Her argument about animals affecting legal codes through the nature of their physiology and behavior patterns, however, would seem to fit other, less marketable creatures caught up in European American colonization, including mountain lions, bears, and even insects. Wild by Nature nonetheless succeeds in demonstrating that wild animals, by their very nature, challenged and changed colonial presumptions about human control over the process of North American colonization as expressed in legal regimes and private property. Kerri Keller Clement Department of History University of Colorado Boulder Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Wrighting the West: Leaving Marks in Frank X Walker's York Poems

Wrighting the WestLeaving Marks in Frank X Walker's York Poems Jimmy Dean Smith (bio) On September 26, 1806, Captain Meriwether Lewis, back in civilization and a guest in the home of Jean Pierre Choteau of St. Louis, composed one final entry for the journals in which he and William Clark recorded the three-year expedition of the Corps of Discovery.1 "A fine morning," he wrote, "we commenced wrighting &c" (Journals).2 Gary E. Moulton, who edited Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition for the University of Nebraska Press, calls this entry "anticlimactic" (lxii). In fact, Moulton omits the entry altogether from his single volume abridgement of Lewis and Clark, a notable decision since these are, after all, the Journals' last words. Scholars preparing the digital edition of the Journals for the University of Nebraska believe that this day's "wrighting" involved completing mostly ceremonial letters to the president and other political figures (n2), a falling of that concludes what Moulton calls "An American Epic of Discovery" in bureaucratic necessity. Regarding a metaliterary reading of "wrighting"—i.e., that Lewis was, in fact, adding content to the journals themselves or even beginning the process of creating "the red notebook journals . . . after the return" (Journals, Introduction)—the same scholars are not entirely dismissive but still drily doubtful: "It is possible that Clark still had some of his journals to complete, although there are objections to this supposition" (n2). Yet, in making their physical journey, Lewis and Clark also made a rhetorical journey that equipped them with a vocabulary suitable to their writerly task. The serendipitous wrighting clarifies the rhetorical situation of the expedition. There was once a verb to wright, which meant "to build or construct"—to make—that is no [End Page 435] longer used, though its ghost lingers in still-familiar nouns: cart-wright, wheelwright, and playwright ("artificer or handicraftsman; esp. a constructive workman" ["wright"]). Meriwether Lewis's accidental but significant pun joins together making-wrighting with word-writing. The inadvertent wordplay foregrounds how the authors of The Journals of Lewis and Clark rhetorically constructed—wrote to wright—an exploitable western wilderness. Writing/wrighting thus exemplifies a tactic for fashioning the duality Val Plumwood deems necessary for constructing the "master identity" (4), wherein the civilized, civilizing principle of reason positions itself against nature: Reason in the western tradition has been constructed as the privileged domain of the master, who has conceived nature as a wife or subordinate other. . . . To be defined as "nature" in this context is to be defined as passive, . . . as the "environment" or invisible background conditions against which the "foreground" achievements of reason or culture (provided typically by the white, western, male expert or entrepreneur) take place. It is to be defined as a terra nullius, a resource empty of its own purposes and meanings, and hence available to be annexed for the purposes of those supposedly identified with reason or intellect, and to be conceived and moulded in relation to those purposes. (3–4) In their journals, Lewis and Clark drafted the national epic of exploration, their words not only describing but also creating the landscape they passed through. What had been terra incognita, a virtually unknown vastness to them, was charted, with comprehensible names filling in what had only recently been blank spaces on the Euro-American map. They wrote and wrought, crafting a rational identity for the environment that objectified the "virgin" land and thus bestowed meaning upon it. They named the land and therefore made it useful—or exploitable. As John F. Sears remarks about the white rechristening of places in the West, "naming is claiming, an act of asserting cultural hegemony" (152). Once named (and claimed), the landscape becomes historically significant—though that significance is based on settling the question what history, or, [End Page 436] perhaps more accurately, whose. Ursula K. Le Guin emphasizes the egoism—the I am-ness—of Master rhetoric that turns land into an exploitable Other: "Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is Other—outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I...

Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide by Mary O. Parker

Reviewed by: Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide by Mary O. Parker Michelle M. Haggerty Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide. By Mary O. Parker. Photographs by Jeff Parker. Foreword by Carter P. Smith. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. xi + 302 pp. Illustrations, maps, index. $28.00 paper. Explore Texas: A Nature Travel Guide is a wonderful companion for the naturalist and nature enthusiast taking a trip across Texas. Author Mary O. Parker focuses on nearly 100 nature-related venues and events statewide organized by the seven official regions of Texas: Big Bend Country, Gulf Coast, Hill Country, Panhandle Plains, Piney Woods, Prairies and Lakes, and South Texas Plains. This guide serves as a sort of life list for what to see, when to see it, and why we should take the time to explore the natural landscapes, destinations, and events of each Texas region. Beautiful photographs by Jeff Parker [End Page 93] enhance each section. Each entry contains a map, travel directions, and tips for how to make the most of your adventure. Helpful activity icons like "wildlife watching," "geology gems," and more accompany each venue to help you see which nature activity is available. But what sets this book apart from other nature travel guides is the excellent education sections for each venue. It offers fascinating facts and intriguing details about specific aspects of each particular location. For example, the entry for the Brazos Bend State Park and George Observatory details the site's American alligators, Anhinga birds, and northern raccoons. This serves to enhance the explorer's experience and, one hopes, spark in that person an appreciation of the need for continued conservation and protection for these areas. Michelle M. Haggerty Texas Master Naturalist State Program Coordinator Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln