GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY PLAINS QUARTERLY GREAT GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY FALL 2013 VOL. 33 NO. 4 FALL 2013 VOLUME 33 NUMBER 33 VOLUME 4 2013 FALL CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA–LINCOLN GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY Volume 33 / Number 4 / Fall 2013 EDITOR Charles A. Braithwaite Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln REVIEW ESSAYS AND BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR George E. Wolf English, Emeritus, University of Nebraska–Lincoln EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS David Ruigh and Melissa A. Marsh COPYEDITOR Lona Dearmont ASSOCIATE EDITORS Richard Edwards Director, Center for Great Plains Studies Economics, University of Nebraska–Lincoln Frances W. Kaye English, University of Nebraska–Lincoln David J. Wishart Geography, University of Nebraska–Lincoln BOARD OF ADVISORY EDITORS Blake Allmendinger Frederick C. Luebke English, University of California, Los Angeles History, Emeritus, University of Nebraska–Lincoln Rudolfo Anaya Steven Pratt Literature, University of New Mexico Communication Studies, University of Central Oklahoma Patricia Covarrubias William C. Pratt Communication Studies, University of Montana History, University of Nebraska at Omaha Clyde Ellis Victoria Smith History, Elon University History and Ethnic Studies/Native American Studies, P. Jane Hafen University of Nebraska–Lincoln English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Robert Thacker John C. Hudson Canadian Studies/English, St. Lawrence University Anthropology/Geography, Northwestern University John H. Thompson Timothy J. Kloberdanz History/Canadian Studies, Duke University Anthropology, North Dakota State University Joan Carpenter Troccoli Howard Roberts Lamar Art History, Denver Art Museum History, Emeritus, Yale University Paul Willeto Education & Visual Communication, Diné College PUBLISHED BY THE CENTER FOR GREAT PLAINS STUDIES AND THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY FALL 2013 VOL. 33 NO. 4 CONTENTS THE 2013 GREAT PLAINS DISTINGUISHED BOOK PRIZE R. M. Joeckel 203 MAKING WAR ON JUPITER PLUVIUS: THE CULTURE AND SCIENCE OF RAINMAKING IN THE SOUTHERN GREAT PLAINS, 1870–1913 Michael R. Whitaker 207 EASTERN BEADS, WESTERN APPLICATIONS: WAMPUM AMONG PLAINS TRIBES Jordan Keagle 221 THE DIMINISHMENT OF THE GREAT SIOUX RESERVATION: TREATIES, TRICKS, AND TIME Alan L. Neville and Alyssa Kaye Anderson 237 BOOK REVIEWS 253 NOTES AND NEWS 266 BOOK REVIEWS Susan A. Miller and James Riding In, eds. Robert L. Dorman Native Historians Write Back: Hell of a Vision: Regionalism and the Decolonizing American Indian History Modern American West BY ANGELA PARKER 253 BY ALLEN FROST 260 William Swagerty, Foreword by James P. Ronda Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty, and The Indianization of Lewis and Clark Karla Armbruster, eds. The Bioregional Imagination: BY CLARISSA W. CONFER 253 Literature, Ecology, and Place Jim Garry BY JENNY KERBER 260 Weapons of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Candace Savage BY BROOKE WIBRACHT 255 A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Doreen Chaky Memory from a Prairie Landscape Terrible Jus tice: Sioux Chiefs and U.S. Soldiers BY SUSAN NARAMORE MAHER 261 on the Upper Missouri, 1854–1868 BY STEVEN C. HAACK 255 Mark Andrew White, ed., Foreword by David L. Boren, Stanley B. Kimball and Violet T. Kimball Introduction by Mary Jo Watson Villages on Wheels: A Social History of the The James T. Bialac Native American Gathering to Zion Art Collection: Selected Works BY W. PAUL REEVE 256 BY EMMA I. HANSEN 262 Roger L. Di Silvestro Alan J. Hirschfi eld with Terry Winchell, Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands: Photographs by W. Garth Dowling, A Young Politician’s Quest for Recovery Foreword by Gaylord Torrence in the American West Living with American Indian Art: The Hirschfield Collection BY MARK HARVEY 257 BY HEATHER AHTONE 263 Yossi Katz and John Lehr Inside the Ark: The Hutterites in Canada and Brian T. Atkinson, Forewords by the United States “Cowboy” Jack Clement and Harold F. Eggers Jr. I’ll Be Here in the Morning: The Songwriting BY ROD JANZEN 258 Legacy of Townes Van Zandt Brian D. Behnken BY CHUCK VOLLAN 264 Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Jean A. Boyd Civil Rights in Texas Dance All Night: Those Other Southwestern Swing Bands, Past and Present BY EDWIN DORN 259 BY JOHN MARK DEMPSEY 264 THE 2013 GREAT PLAINS DISTINGUISHED BOOK PRIZE R. M. JOECKEL EDITOR’S NOTE: Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood In- can lives in the shadows of the post-Custer and dian’s Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect Jus- pre–American Indian Movement era—in its well- tice, by William E. Farr, was selected as the recipient researched and skillful narrative of what is a sin- of the 2013 Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize. I gularly incredible story. asked one of the Book Prize judges, Dr. R. M. Joeckel, A talented writer of historical fiction would University of Nebraska–Lincoln, to comment on the be very hard pressed to have woven a more un- book and the selection process. Dr. Joeckel is Professor likely tale than the utterly true one of Spopee, and Research Geologist, School of Natural Resources, a Canadian Blackfoot (Blood) convicted of mur- Conservation and Survey Division (Nebraska Geologi- dering a white hunter named Charles Walmesley cal Survey), as well as Professor in the Department of in the notoriously anarchic “Whoop-Up” border Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Curator of Geol- country of northwestern Montana in 1879. The ogy at the University of Nebraska State Museum. protracted machinations of the nascent but po- litically charged judicial system of Montana Terri- After long deliberations by members of three tory eventually left Spopee awaiting execution by subcommittees and the chairs of those commit- hanging in early 1881, but unbeknownst to him, tees, the Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize his journey into the arcane depths of American was awarded to Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood In- history was just beginning. There was to be no dian’s Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect hanging after all. An unexpected commutation Justice, by William E. Farr, published by the Uni- of his sentence and the inadequacies of the ter- versity of Oklahoma Press. As the chair of the ritorial prison system occasioned his internment prize committee, I am pleased to state that many at the Detroit House of Corrections, some 1,800 fine books were submitted for the competition, miles from the scene of the crime. Less than fif- and that each of them was meritorious in some teen months after his arrival in Detroit, the in- way. Nevertheless, Blackfoot Redemption is unique mate found himself whisked 500 miles yet farther among the submissions—and indeed among the eastward to Washington, DC, to a near-lifetime vast majority of accounts of Plains Native Ameri- of confinement at the Government Hospital for [GPQ 33 (Fall 2013):203–205] 203 204 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2013 2013 GREAT PLAINS DISTINGUISHED BOOK PRIZE 205 the Insane, more kindly known as St. Elizabeth’s, who, according to a latter-day Native American of Civil War fame. Thus, in a space of less than commentator, “was just like a white guy.” Preoc- three years, an aboriginal man who had hardly cupied with property, position, money, and the seen a white man in his youth came to be the prospect of government benevolence, Spopee ward of a Euro-American government in its teem- didn’t even live for a year beyond his grand ing seat of power. “homecoming” to Montana and reunion with a Although Farr does a very good job in piec- daughter who really never knew him. ing together snippets of knowledge and medical As well or better than any other author, Farr reports, unfortunately, we will never know much manages the narrative transition from Spopee’s about this strange man caught in the strangest of trial, his first brush with fame, through his ill-doc- circumstances. The non-English-speaking Spopee umented and forgotten years of hospitalization, effectively ceased anything like coherent commu- to his headline-grabbing rediscovery and pardon. nication shortly after his admission to the Gov- Farr’s account of Spopee’s anticlimactic demise ernment Hospital for the Insane and withdrew provides ample basis for the reader to sympa- into a private world of quiet, order, routine, and thize, yet it avoids pathos and, gratefully, allows a weird fascination with the creative counterfeit- the reader to draw his or her own conclusion ing of currency and its ritualized exchange. The from the convoluted tale. Although Farr claims he knew for many years “the intriguing if sketchy latter, along with the gradual acquisition of a lim- outlines of the Spopee story, as have others [my em- ited degree of English literacy, a pinstriped suit, phasis],” that he was able to elaborate, much less and a moustache that would not have been out of bring to life, the story of Spopee is achievement place on William Howard Taft, can collectively be enough. The clarity of his writing and complete- viewed as Spopee’s attempt at assimilation to an ness of his factual accounting, together with the unfathomably foreign world. tempering of his noteworthy objectivity with a Aptly likened by author Farr simultaneously subtle but thoroughgoing empathy, render Black- to the fictitious Rip Van Winkle and to the all- foot Redemption truly prizeworthy. Finally, Farr’s to o-real Ishi, the crudely designated “last wild In- epilogue, unlike a host of others, is one actually dian in America,” Spopee is a man out of place worth reading. and time, an antique and a prototype at once, the The incredible story of Spopee is so well attacker-become-victim, and both casualty and framed and related by Farr that it can be viewed survivor. The cliché induced by Spopee’s tale is as the story of a man, the story of a people, or deflected, however, by the personal tragedy em- the story of the changing times. It can certainly bedded in it.