Book Review of \u3ci\u3e Discovering North American Rock Art\u3c/i\u3e Edited by Lawrence L. Loendorf, Christopher Chippindale, and David S. Whitley

If readers of Great Plains Research are seeking a window on rock art research in North America, this book provides a few clear panes, a few that are hazy, and a few muddy ones. Like many edited volumes, the weaker contributions and lack of a consistent style limit the book\u27s usefulness. Some authors target a general readership; others clearly are addressing colleagues. The book has two stated themes: the history of rock art research in North America and recent approaches to rock art analysis. Articles by Julie Francis and (jointly) David Whitley and Jean Clottes explore why rock art research has long been marginalized in North America. Unfortunately, both of these otherwise observant essays slip into advocacy of shamanism as a unifying or primary explanation for rock art, an interpretive model by no means universally accepted by today\u27s rock art specialists

Book Review: \u3ci\u3eThunder and Herds: Rock Art of the High Plains\u3c/i\u3e By Lawrence L. Loendorf

Archaeology is often described as detective work. In this detailed exploration of the High Plains of Colorado and New Mexico, archaeologist Lawrence Loendorf proves as adept as Sherlock Holmes in bringing diverse and often surprising clues to bear on understanding the who, when, where, and why of ancient rock carvings and paintings. From climate change to cultural migrations to landscape, Loendorf carefully reconstructs the contexts, cultural and physical, in which long-ago and not-so-long-ago American Indians created this complex array of images. The twin joys of archaeology are discovery and the challenge of filling in missing pieces of history. The former requires patience, training, a discerning eye, and sometimes dumb luck. The latter requires the researcher to traverse the humanities-science divide, calling on scientific techniques along with the knowledge of the lifeways and oral traditions of Indigenous people. The archaeologist’s detective kit includes chemistry and physics, anthropology, geology, mythology, psychology, zoology, and art history

The Sacred Black Hills An Ethnohistorical Review

The Black Hills area is widely recognized as sacred in the context of traditional Lakota and Cheyenne belief systems. Questions arise, however, regarding the authenticity and historical depth of these beliefs.1 Some researchers assert that the concept of the sacred Black Hills is little more than a twentieth century scheme to promote tourism or part of a legal strategy to gain the return of Black Hills lands to Lakota and Cheyenne tribal governments.2 While many Lakotas and Cheyennes today express a strong spiritual link to the Black Hills,3 some historians have questioned whether today\u27s beliefs about the Black Hills have historic precedents. Watson Parker questions whether the Lakotas could have developed a sacred geography in the relatively short time they occupied the Black Hills. Donald Worster concedes that the Black Hills are now widely regarded as sacred to the Lakota people, but asserts that the area was not viewed as holy ground prior to the 1970s.4 The position that the Black Hills held little significance to Indians is most frequently based on two sources: Richard I. Dodge\u27s The Black Hills, written in 1875, and Edwin Denig\u27s Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri, written in 1854.5 Both assert that the Lakotas then living in the area made little use of the Black Hills, venturing in only to gather tipi poles. Dodge and Denig state that the Lakotas avoided the Black Hills because game was scarce, pasturage was insufficient for horses, and there were superstitions about evil spirits inhabiting the mountains. This information has been cited with little regard to the historical context in which it was compiled. Denig reported that much superstition is attached to the Black Hills by the Indian, incorrectly attributing this superstition to volcanic action causing smoke and loud noises in the interior mountains.6 While later writers mentioned loud, booming noises in the Black Hills, there is no evidence for any recent volcanic activity in the area, and the phenomenon remains unconfirmed and unexplained. Denig\u27s informants told him the noises were the groans of a Great White Giant condemned to lie under the mountains as punishment for intruding into the Lakotas\u27 hunting ground and as a lesson to all whites to stay out of the area, a story clearly meant to scare whites away from the Black Hills .. Denig himself had no personal interest in the opening of the Black Hills to white settlement, but seems merely to have been repeating what his informants told him

The Pageant of Paha Sapa An Origin Myth of White Settlement In The American West

As a literary work initiated and directed by a committee of women, The Pageant of Paha Sapa captures the zeitgeist of the post Arontier era through the eyes of the influential women of one small town. Like all origin myths, this script presented the current populace as the rightful heirs of the place and its resources, having won them through persistence, struggle, and divinely ordained destiny. The pageant\u27s message was that civilizing influences had transformed the former Indian paradise and frontier hell-on-wheels into a respectable modern community. This theme of social evolution was typical of the larger pageant movement; however, unlike the eastern towns, Custer, South Dakota, could not draw on its past for moral authority. The town began as a mining camp, with the rootlessness and disorder of any western gold rush town, compounded by conflicts with Indians trying to drive the white trespassers from their reservation lands. History as expressed in Custer\u27s pageant leaped from primitive perfection to historic chaos to a modern, orderly community. Modifications to the script and performance over the years imply points of tension between the local women\u27s early post-frontier origin myth and new views of frontier history at mid twentieth century. RURAL REFORMS OF THE PROGRESSIVE ERA The postsettlement years in the western United States were a time for towns to reflect on their short and often checkered histories. With the challenges of frontier life behind them, townspeople sought legitimacy through stories of their founders. During the first decades of the twentieth century, townspeople performed these stories, mythic or real, in colorful historical pageants. In performing and witnessing the historical dramas, cast and audience internalized their local story and awoke to their town\u27s role in the march of progress. During the rise of the Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century, politicians and activists from a wide range of political, educational, economic, and geographic backgrounds embraced the idea that government could institute social reforms that would promote equality, social harmony, and morality. Along with a concern for the rights of workers, children, and women, progressives sought to improve the lives of individuals of all classes through outdoor recreation, communal activities, and exposure to the fine arts. Among the tangible results of this movement were public parks and playgrounds, public murals, settlement houses, and youth organizations