Book Review: The Great Plains

Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Plains. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931.

In The Great Plains, Walter Prescott Webb introduced his thesis for the development of that region of America, which he used as the title for his book. Webb’s thesis states that, “the Great Plains have bent and molded Anglo-American life, have destroyed traditions, and have influenced institutions in a most singular manner”. According to Webb, there are three major characteristics of the Great Plains region of this nation that are responsible for most of these cultural and institutional changes. Those characteristics include: a comparatively level surface throughout most of the region, a lack of forests (scarcity of timber for building), and the semi-arid climate. These environmental characteristics forced Europeans in general but Americans in particular to adapt many parts of their culture before the Great Plains could be settled. Throughout this book Webb discusses the cultural traditions and institutions that were adapted to the Great Plains environment. The specific traditions and institutions will be discussed in this review, however the structure and organization will be discussed first.

Webb begins his study of the Great Plains in the fashion of the Annales School by tracing the geologic development of the Great Plains, discussing climate patterns, plant life, and finally animal life in the first major chapter before he introduces the reader to the human history of the region. Webb discusses Native Americans, the Spanish in the Southwest, and finally the Americans; each of these three groups is discussed using Webb’s thesis that the environment forced changes and adaptations in cultural institutions and traditions. Webb spends most of his study focusing on the American period of settlement after briefly discussing Native Americans and the Spanish. The major areas of American culture that Webb believed were changed through interaction with the Great Plains environment include: transportation, weapons, livestock, building and fencing materials, water use, agriculture, laws, and literature. In discussing Native Americans and Spaniards Webb is not as thorough as he is when discussing Americans; however, it is interesting to note some of the cultural adaptations experienced by these groups that Webb does mention.

The first human inhabitants were of course Native Americans and Webb begins his discussion of Great Plains tribes by pointing out certain characteristics that these tribes shared, including: a nomadic and nonagricultural lifestyle, dependence on the buffalo for food and material goods, use of weapons primarily adapted to the hunting of big game, beasts of burden for transportation (dogs and later horses), adoption of the horse before contact with Europeans. If Webb’s characteristics are adhered to, eleven tribes could be categorized as true Plains Indians: Sarsi, Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Crow, Cheyenne, Lakota, Arapaho, Kiowa-Apache, Kiowa, Comanche, and Assiniboin. Webb’s examination of the Indian population of the Great Plains regions also follows his thesis that the environment forced everything (plants, animals, humans) to adapt in order to survive. In exploring this aspect of his thesis relative to Indians, Webb discusses the adoption of the horse to the activity of buffalo hunting on the plains. Webb does not simply launch into a discussion of the horse at the time Indians came into contact with the animal in the late seventeenth century, rather he begins this part of his study in Asia several thousand years ago.

While Webb’s long winded explanations for how Native Americans came to acquire the horse fills a good deal of this chapter, Webb was also able to make short and insightful statements regarding the impact of a new technology, such as the horse. Webb said that as a result of Native Americans acquiring the horse, “they became more nomadic, less inclined to agriculture, more warlike, and far better buffalo hunters than they had been before”. Not all of Webb’s opinions regarding Indians of the plains can be said to be insightful or even enlightened. For example, when discussing the possible reasons for why the Comanche decided to become horsemen, Webb was almost certain that it had something to do with a desire to “compensate for their short legs”. In the next section, however, Webb again makes insightful comments and helps his thesis by discussing the reasons for the development of Native American sign language, a necessary innovation that was created to enable tribes to communicate with each other once they started moving farther and farther from their original homelands after their adoption of the horse culture.

The section on the Spanish also presents some insights designed to support Webb’s thesis. For instance, Webb discusses how the Spanish were better suited than any other colonial power to adapt to life on the Great Plains given the fact, he states, that Spain shared many of the climatic and physical environment characteristics with that region of North America. Since Spain seemed to have an advantage over the other European powers in adapting to the Great Plains environment, the next logical question would be to ask why they did not make lasting settlements in that region and why they seemed to largely avoid the area with the exception of a handful of expeditions. According to Webb this has something to do with the fact that Spain’s goals for her New World empire dictated that the Great Plains be avoided due to the lack of metallic wealth and the general lack of prospective servants in the form of Native Americans. Spain’s efforts to conquer the region were repelled by the well armed and mounted Plains Indians that inhabited the region, making a direct route between San Antonio and Santa Fe difficult to maintain and keeping Spain on the edges of the Great Plains.

Webb also maintains that there was a failure on the part of the Spaniards to adapt to the environment of the Great Plains. As Webb writes, the Spanish colonial system was akin to the European feudal system and was dependent upon several elements, one of which was large populations of servants. Spain’s colonial system worked best among groups like the Pueblo Indians; less developed groups like the Pawnee and Kansa were not worth the time and effort to conquer since there would be little to gain. So according to Webb, the major reason for Spanish failure on the Great Plains has almost everything to do with their refusal to adopt their colonial system and their cultural institutions to the environment of the Great Plains.

Following Webb’s discussion of the Spanish, he begins to discuss the American period of settlement on the Great Plains. The rest of the book focuses on America and how the culture and traditions of these settlers was adapted to fit the environment of the Great Plains. There are many areas of pioneer culture that needed to be changed and one of the first that Webb mentions was the need for explorers to view the plains region as something more than simply an area to cross through with the goal of reaching the Pacific Ocean. Americans viewed the Great Plains as a problem early on, then, due to the fact that most explorers immediately overlooked them. Webb mentions one of the most interesting adaptations early in his section on the American approach to the Great Plains, namely, the Colt revolver. Webb’s idea for this book came while reading Emerson Hough’s The Ways of the West. In that book, the author mentions that the Kentucky long rifle was the gun of choice in the West. This statement led Webb to adopt his thesis and eventually to write this book, so when it comes to his discussion of how the Colt revolver was much more suited to the Great Plains than the long rifle, Webb’s excitement can be felt while reading the page. Webb lists several important reasons why the rifle was of little use to pioneers, mainly the fact that it could take a minute or longer to load and was difficult to shoot from the back of a horse. The Colt revolver meanwhile was “six guns in one” and was easier to shoot on horseback, which would provide an advantage while fighting against Indians of the plains.

Other adaptations discussed by Webb include the transition from water transportation to primarily horse powered transportation, forest based cattle raising was exchanged for open range cattle raising, wood or stone fencing and housing were abandoned (due to a lack of these materials) for sod and later barbed wire fencing, those accustomed to plentiful water supplies in the East were forced to adapt to much smaller water allowances, new agricultural methods utilizing special seed hybrids were adopted, new laws and forms of literature were also adapted to fit the environment. Many of the new laws dealt with land and water rights to protect citizens from people who were trying to engross or buy up all of the available land with water rights and access. New forms of literature were published that stressed adventure and suffering of pioneers and their families.

Webb’s work was not an original idea, few truly are, but his style is such that the reading is very easy which helped make the book accessible to many people, scholar and layperson alike. Webb’s contribution to historiography needs to be analyzed, especially given the weight of a work like The Great Plains. In understanding Webb’s contribution, it would be best to compare his conception of the West to that of Turner. To Turner the West was a process; a frontier line that was not anchored to a place for any significant length of time and the argument that he made regarding “the end of the frontier” could also have been viewed as him saying that it was the end of the West. For the citizens of this section of our nation that is a disparaging thought. When Webb wrote this book he wrote it from a perspective that shows he believes in place over process in the debate waged among historians of the American West. Webb clearly states in precise terms where the West can be found on any map and he even goes so far as to let his readers know that the region has a very ancient history and that it still exists as a region today and it always will. This is why Webb spent so much of the beginning of his work describing the geologic history of the Great Plains and the history of the flora and fauna, he wanted his readers to understand that the history of the West did not begin when the first Europeans entered the region. Colin G. Calloway also takes this tact in One Vast Winter Count when he focuses on the history of the West before the Lewis and Clark expedition. Webb’s The Great Plains ranks among the great books of western history due to these historiographical