UA PROFESSOR SAYS HISTORY OF GREAT PLAINS ANYTHING BUT FLAT

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — In the struggle to maintain their way of life, the plains Indians fought army outposts and infectious disease. But it was mis-use of the land that finally pulled in the reins on the Great Plains horse culture, asserts a University of Arkansas historian in his award-winning new book.

In "The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado," Dr. Elliott West explains that life on the Great Plains required a shrewd management of resources that neither the Native Americans nor the white settlers fully mastered. The result was environmental degradation, which destroyed one culture and disillusioned the other.

Published in April 1998 by the University Press of Kansas, West’s book has met national acclaim as an authoritative historical text on America’s Great Plains. On April 23, the Organization of American Historians will award West their prestigious Ray Allen Billington Prize. In addition, the book has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in history.

According to West’s work, the seeming abundance of the Great Plains — its endless horizon and ocean of dense vegetation — deceived both native tribes and white settlers into believing that the open grasslands would support and sustain them.

In actuality, the wide expanse of prairie lacked many of the resources necessary for long-term habitation. Only 3-5 percent of the land offered water and wooded shelter. Outside these scattered river valleys, people risked exposure to the harshest weather conditions — drought, blizzard, tornadoes and hail.

The necessity of such sheltered areas for survival meant that the true conflict between whites

and Indians had little to do with ideology or lifestyle, West said. Instead, it was a simple competition for resources.

According to West, the native tribes had already begun to overtax the river valley resources. With the additional demands of white settlers in the 1850s, these environmental systems were pushed beyond rejuvenation.

"By concentrating their numbers and their horses in these wooded areas during the winter, the Indians were already wearing down these vital environmental niches," West said. "But now white people were coming over the land in the summer, cutting the trees, using the same valleys.

"The combined effects left these areas devastated. For the travelers this was a problem. For the Indians it was disaster."

One of the events that sparked this rapid degeneration of the plains environment was the Colorado gold rush of 1858, which lured a steady stream of settlers across the Great Plains toward a vision of wealth in the Rocky Mountains.

"The gold rush had at least as much impact on the country these people rushed across as it did on the country they rushed to," said West. "This influx of people immediately began to transform the plains. This was not just a conversation with the land but a shouting match."

For a culture already in crisis, this invasion of settlers was the final blow. Tribal economies suffocated as more white people moved into the plains, building travel-houses, ranches, army posts and towns.

Despite the vast expanse upon which the horse culture and the white people met, there simply was not enough room for the both of them, said West. The limited resources of the land could not support the demands of two populations, no matter how different their ways of life.

The settlers may have won their place on the land, but no number of general stores or saloons could ease the harsh conditions of life on the Great Plains.

"The reality is that the plains are one of the most erratic environments in the world," West said. "If you break the sod the wrong way, destroy the grass cover too much, overproduce, overgraze, you’re going to reap dust. Even if you do everything right, you may suffer anyway from drought or bad weather."

Even those who settled had to continue managing their resources to assure that their own mistakes — as well as the uncontrollable ravages of climate — did not catch them unprepared for crisis.

Those who failed to do so succumbed to failure — a result that West attributes to the folly of superimposing human expectations and intentions over the unpredictable face of the land.

"The Great Plains may be the oldest inhabited part of what is today the United States," West said. "People have been living there for at least 12-14 thousand years — longer than almost anyplace else. It’s not that the place is uninhabitable, but you’ve got to understand its limits."

West applies this lesson to the way we approach the Great Plains even today.

"I think we now have a better understanding of the plains than we did in 1850," he said. "I want to think that we have grown up enough as a nation to approach this place on its own terms. If we want to use the Great Plains, we need to develop a sustainable economy in light of the land’s own restraints."

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