I. The Grasslands

A. Grassland ecology

1. Tall grass prairie: Extends from timber line westward to 100deg. meridian. Rainfall above twenty inches. Blue stem, needle grass, and wheat grass. (98deg.-100deg. mixed has tall and short grassland.)

2. Short grass plains: Extends from 100deg. meridian westward to deserts. Grama, galleta, buffalo grasses and mesquite. Rainfall is ten to twenty 20-10 inches per year with recurring cycles of drought; is insufficient for sustained crop yields.

3. Desert: Sagebrush, creosote bush, salt-desert shrub. Rainfall below 10 inches per year.

4. Animals: Bison, antelope, jack rabbit, and prairie dog are grass eaters and require little water. Wolf and coyote are predators.

5. Ecological effects: Obliteration of native prairie, depletion of perennial grasses, and annual grasses by ranching and farming, with resultant wind and water erosion and marked decrease in topsoil. Buffalo are exterminated in 1870s, and cattle and sheep are introduced.

B. Exogenous factors disrupting grassland ecology

1. Population: From 1540 to 1880, plains populated by nomadic plains Indians with highly developed horse culture: Kiowas, Missouris, Pawnees, Comanches, Crees, Arikaras, Assiniboins, Crows, Mandans, Snakes, Tetons. Indians are subdued by 1876 and moved onto reservations. After 1865 ranchers move onto high plains. Ranches boom in 1880s. Farming in tall grass prairies (1870) extends onto arid plains in wet years of 1880s. Farming retreats in drought years of 1884 and 1894 and Dust Bowl 1934-39.

2. Rise of Market

a. Cattle market (1866-1885): First market town appears in Abilene, on Kansas Pacific Railroad with connection to Chicago at Missouri River, followed by cow towns at Wichita, Newton, Ellsworth, Junction City, and Dodge City. Market allows rapid stocking, overgrazing of grass as free resource base. Prices rise from $7-8 per head in 1879, to $12 in 1881 and $30 in 1882. Overgrazing depletes perennial grasses and less nutritious annuals, with resulting wind and water erosion of soil. Drought of 1883, market crash of 1884-1885, and blizzards of 1885-1886 force many cattle ranchers out of business. After 1885 packing industries begin to control prices, and farmers and sheep herders compete for land, bringing about decline in cattle industry.

b. Farming: Corn and wheat markets rise in early 1880s in Nebraska, Kansas, and eastern Colorado. Kansas produces 150,000,000 bushels of corn in 1883. In 1879 12 million acres of crops are harvested in Great Plains; in 1899, 54 million; in 1919, 88 million; in 1929, 103 million. But pattern of overplanting by absentee landlords for quick profits causes prices to drop and crops to be left standing. Acreage of native grasses is sharply reduced; top soil erodes. Long-term ecological disruption by market forces culminates in Dust Bowl tragedies of 1934-39.

3. Technology

a. Samuel Colt six shooter (1835): Subdues Plains Indians and their horse culture.

b. John Deere steel plow (1846): Needed for breaking up sod and thick root masses of tall grass prairies where no stone and grit existed to scour mould board of older iron plow.

c. Railroads (1866): Create market system for cattle; brings homesteaders to prairies and arid plains.

d. Barbed wire (1874): Invented by Joseph Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois. Allows ranchers and farmers to fence their property, separate pastures, isolate water supplies, and introduce blooded herds. Transforms open range to stock ranch. Makes homestead possible.

e. Windmill (used on plains beginning in 1880s): Helps to solve water problem by pumping up and storing subsurface water. Allows ranchers to create pastures in outlying ranch areas. Used by railroads to pump water for engines. Makes truck gardening possible on homestead and ranch.

f. Mechanical steam plows, cultivators, threshing machines and harvesters. Used after industrial revolution, along with dams and irrigation systems.

4. Social Relations

a. Cattle Industry: Market fluctuations and drought or blizzard patterns combine to produce large cattle syndicators and cattle barons. Small cattle ranchers are unable to compete or fence their ranges. Range wars break out between larger fence-men (who have enclosed water holes and public lands and have blocked roads) and smaller fence-cutters for control of grassland resource base. Antagonism among ranchers toward meat packers and sheep ranchers arises. Cattle barons employ cowhands, both whites (including English, Spanish, German, Swedish, and Danish) and nonwhites (including black, Mexican, and Indian) as wage workers, creating cowboy proletariat.

b. Farming: Land speculators with large tracts of government land sell at inflated prices. Fraud and landlord-tenant system spell failure of the Homestead Act to sustain subsistence farming base in plains. Local farmers unify in Grange movements. Populism arises as a political party in late 1880s.

5. Attitudes: Belief in Great American Desert beyond 100deg. meridian suitable only for nomads, hunters, and trappers is transformed to idea of "Garden of the World." Josiah Gregg (Commerce of the Prairies, 1844), Samuel Aughey, University of Nebraska, and Charles Dana Wilbur ("rain follows the plow") develop "scientific" theory that planting forests will increase moisture in prairies and plains. Horace Greeley promotes the Homestead Act (1862) as a solution to eastern unemployment. After droughts and failure of agriculture and the Homestead Act, Edwin Markham compares independent yeoman farmer to European peasant .

1. Discuss the unique features of Great Plains ecology, including topography, climate, water, grasses, and animals. What features made settlement of the Great Plains by Europeans different from settlement of the eastern seaboard region?

2. What is the meaning of natural resource exploitation? (see Glossary) Compare Indian and Euramerican exploitation of the resources of the Great Plains. Which resources were important to each group and for what purposes?

3. Assess the environmental impacts of the native buffalo and nonnative horse on the plains. Why do you think cattle rather than buffalo became marketable U.S. commodities? How were buffalo, cattle, and sheep both used and abused as a result of Great Plains exploitation?

4. What racial and ethnic groups settled on the plains, as revealed in the documents and essays? What social and cultural factors influenced the social stratification that developed there?

5. What were some responses of women to nature on the Great Plains as revealed in the documents? What technologies aided women's life on the plains? Were women "reluctant pioneers"? How did the Homestead Act aid women?

6. According to Walter Prescott Webb, what technological innovations made settlement of the Great Plains possible? Assess his interpretation as environmental history. Can Webb be characterized as either an environmental or technological determinist? Do you find determinism plausible as historical interpretation?

7. What does Donald Worster mean by the "tragedy of the laissez faire commons"? In your view is capitalism the primary cause for environmental degradation on the plains?

8. How does William Cronon characterize the two different "stories" told by Webb and Worster about the Plains? Compare the stories of the plains as told by Plentycoups and the author of the last document. How would you tell the buffalo's story? What restraints, if any, does the environment impose on storytelling about the plains? What advantages and disadvantages does Cronon's narrative approach have over the approaches to environmental history discussed in Chapter 1?