The Greater Plains

This collection of essays represents an attempt to move beyond degradation and exploitation as the defining ecological narratives of the Great Plains by examining the region through the interrelated themes of water, grasses, animals, and energy.  

Brian Frehner is an associate professor of history at University of Missouri–Kansas City. He is the author of Finding Oil: The Nature of Petroleum Geology, 1859–1920 (Nebraska, 2011), winner of the Hal K. Rothman Prize, and coeditor of Indians and Energy: Exploitation and Opportunity in the American Southwest. Kathleen A. Brosnan is Paul and Doris Easton Travis Chair of History at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author or coeditor of a number of books, including City of Lake and Prairie: Chicago’s Environmental History and Mapping Nature across the Americas.      

List of Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction Brian Frehner and Kathleen A. Brosnan Part 1. Indigenous Grassland Adaptations over the Longue DurÉe 1. Before the Horse: Indigenous Food Systems on the Plains, 1300–1680 Natale Zappia 2. Travois Trails: Mobile Lifeways of Nineteenth-Century Plains Indian Women Leila Monaghan 3. Bison Hunters and Prairie Fires: A View from the Northwestern Plains MarÍa Nieves ZedeÑo, Christopher Roos, Kacy Hollenback, and Mary Hagen Erlick 4. To Know the Story behind It: Indigenous Heritage and Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains GeneviÈve Susemihl Part 2. Animals on the Great Plains 5. Kinscapes and the Buffalo Chase: The Genesis of Nineteenth-Century Plains MÉtis Hunting Brigades Nicole St-Onge and Brenda Macdougall 6. Fauna and Flux on the Plains’ Edge: Animal Kinship, Place Making, and Cherokee Relational Continuity Clint Carroll 7. Bison and Bookkeeping: Accounting for an Environmental Imagination in Great Plains Trading Posts George Colpitts 8. An Uncommon Nuisance: Cattle Feeding, Nuisance Complaints, and Legal Remedies on the Southern Plains Jacob A. Blackwell Part 3. Modern Agriculture and the Transformation of the Plains 9. Measuring Expertise: Ralph Parshall and Watershed Management, 1920–1940 Michael Weeks 10. A “Plow to Save the Plains”: Conservation Tillage on the North American Grasslands, 1938–1973 Joshua Nygren 11. From Wheat to Wheaties: Minneapolis, the Great Plains, and the Transformation of American Food Michael J. Lansing 12. “Nature Rarely Establishes Sharp Boundaries”: Settler Society Agricultural Adaptation in the Great Plains Northwest Molly P. Rozum Part 4. Energy Landscapes 13. Energy Heartland: How the Midcontinent Pipeline System Fueled and Fouled the Great Plains Philip A. Wight 14. Places of Overburden: Strip Mining and Reclamation on the Northern Great Plains Ryan Driskell Tate 15. Encountering Oil Cultures in a Prairie Town Jonathan Peyton and Matthew Dyce 16. Blows Like Hell: The Windy Plains of the West Julie Courtwright Contributors Index