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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kansas Library and Kansas History Reviews:,
By Elmo B. "Discerning Buyer" (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains, 1859-1875 (Paperback)
The following are published reviews in Kansas Journals:
State Library of Kansas Newsletter - November 2008 Review of Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains By Tom Roth, Interlibrary Loan, State Library Oct 16, 2008, 12:12 Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains by James B. Mead Review by Tom Roth, Interlibrary Loan, State Library This is a fascinating look at life in Kansas from 1859 until 1875. James Mead grew up in Davenport, Iowa, but during his youth he dreamed about going to the Kansas Territory, which he did in his early twenties. This volume is compiled from his journal and letters. It is an interesting account of how Kansas was populated, the type of settlements and the type of people who were attracted to the Kansas during this period. It is replete with lots of information on hunting and trapping and includes many encounters with the American Indian population in the state. It is hard to imagine the great amount of game that was available during this early period of Kansas History. It seems that turkey, squab, quail and other game birds were in great abundance, basically for the taking. Buffalo, elk, and other large mammals were common. Mr. Mead knew Jesse Chisholm, William "Buffalo Bill" Matthewson and Kit Carson, as well as famous Indians such as Santana, War Chief of the Kiowas. The author was in Kansas at the time when the state image was just being formed from "Bleeding Kansas" into a more civilized state by the mid 1870s. We are treated to a great deal of information on cattle drives, Indian life, and how harsh the life could be during this period. One feature of the book that is quite helpful, along with the footnotes, are the maps that show the travels of Mr. Mead through Kansas, along with notes explaining name changes. This is an excellent book on the formation of Kansas as a state and the type of people who were attracted to it. It is hard for us to imagine today -- a 22-year-old young man riding out from civilization with a few friends to lead a life on the frontier. But James Mead did just that. This book provides an excellent picture of life in early Kansas, and would make good reading for all ages from Junior High upward. It is a good purchase for all types of libraries. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains SPRING 2009 Kansas State Historical Society Review [Excerpts] by Kurt E. Kinbacher Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains, 1859-1875, WICHITA, KANS.: ROWFANT PRESS, 2008, PAPER $15.00 This was originally published in 1986 by the University of Oklahoma Press. Editor Schuyler Jones--an anthropologist from Oxford University and Mead's grandson--in this new edition corrected some errors of the 1986 printing and offered a new preface. The sum of these efforts is a readable and intriguing narrative that, while prone to exaggeration, is wonderfully descriptive of the region and psyche of a nineteenth century frontiersman. Mead, like most early Kansans, viewed local resources as commodities. He was especially keen to harvest the fur of grey wolves. In Mead's estimation, Native Americans were both a source of trade business and a hindrance to hunting efforts. His dealings brought him into contact with Kaws; Otoes; Omahas; Osages; Kiowas; Cheyennes; "Sioux"; Wichita--by this time a confederation of Wichitas, Wacos, Towakonis, and Kechis; Caddos--also a confederation that included Ionis and Nadarkos; "semi-civilized Indians" from Indian Territory; Commanches; and Pawnees. Mead's world was a place of hidden whiskey forts, border ruffians, and the Santa Fe Trail. He also claims to have known and greatly respected Jesse Chisholm, Satanta, and Charles Bent. Portraits of these are included in the volume's collection of illustrations. They are augmented by a number of well-placed maps, which are quite useful, as rivers and other points of geography are especially important to the narrative. In total, the successes of this volume far exceed any of its foibles. Hunting and Trading is a valuable resource for plains scholars and a well-told story that can be enjoyed by historians of all kinds.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A life on the edge of survival described in gory detail,
By Richard Barnette Bloom "Dickie" (West Chester, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains, 1859-1875 (Paperback)
That area of the central US we know as the Great Plains was still populated largely by Pawnee, Comanche, and Osage Indians and buffalo so numerous their huge bodies obscured the earth they trod on when hunter James R. Mead arrived in Kansas Territory in 1859, two years after my ancestors. Many of the towns and cities we identify with Kansas had already been founded, such as Kansas City, Wichita, Leavenworth, and Emporia, but between them stretched miles and miles of open prairie, a hunter and trapper's paradise if one could get along with the Indians that occupied the same territory. An unusually articulate and lucid writer (even comprehensively edited) for someone with only an elementary school education, Mead used Leavenworth and, later, Wichita, as bases from which to scour the Great Plains south into Oklahoma along the Santa Fe Trail for buffalo meat and hides and, less frequently, wolf and fox pelts for sale back in the towns and cities. In the first half of the book, which was written between 1888 and 1895 and many years after the events it describes, Mead dwells lovingly on each murderous encounter with buffalo, mainstay of existence for Indians and white men alike, as Casanova described his romantic conquests, and one cannot help wondering whether the author would be classified as psychopathic in our era. But these incidents, critical to Mead's survival and that of his hundreds of customers, are leavened by perceptive and humane characterizations of the author's many friends and allies along his way and evoke in the reader a man resilient and balanced under circumstances whose brutality would have destroyed lesser men, including, I should add, my own ancestors, who remained behind in the safer cities, where they operated dry goods stores and raised many young. Mead's text, supported by the few photographs dating from that era and including studio portraits of some of the best known pioneers and chieftains, meanders from topic to topic as Mead did town to town, including cooking and food; early Kansas medicine; farming practices; Native American language, clothes, dwellings, and customs; Great Plains plants and animals; and transportation. While Mead's reflections lack the depth of a trained historian's, as a primary source I can imagine few rivals to "Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains".
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hunting And Trading On The Great Plains, 1859-1875,
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This review is from: Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains, 1859-1875 (American Exploration and Travel Series) (Hardcover)
Hunting And Trading On The Great Plains, 1859-1875 is about the life of James R. Mead (May 3, 1836 -- March 31, 1910), who left his home near Davenport, Iowa in 1859 to travel to Kansas, where he lived most of the rest of his life. Mead started out hunting animals and making a home in the wild land, soon becoming involved with trading activities with Native Americans, and then later in his life, he was active in various business activities that led to the creation of the town of Wichita. In Chapter 2 -- Hunter's Paradise on page 68, it was interesting learning that Mead gave names to streams he explored that were later used by U.S. Surveyors. Mead's writing highlights many lively experiences in the wild land: ten-foot sunflowers that conceal huge buffalo bulls, playful ravens gliding through the air on their backs for short distances, howling wolves in the night, Confederate Civil War raiders taking the guns and horses from the small town of Salina on September 19, 1862, Native Americans who were honest and honorable in trading, wild-riding Native Americans that looked like they would attack but did not, the close and unearthly screams of mountain lions, Pawnee and white horse thieves, and the lone horseman Native American who showed his ability with a bow and arrow by splintering his arrow on a buffalo skull. Young Mead was wrong in his view that the buffalo would always be a part of the Kansas landscape as he did surplus killing to have the social advantage of more money; in one hunt, he killed 330 buffaloes, and in another hunt, he killed 302 wolves. In the last chapter, Mead rides the railway through places he visited in his youth by horse and is saddened by the forced changes to the land, the essence of which he contributed to by his own development actions in the past. There are photographs of people, footnotes of information, and maps of Mead's journeys in the book. Mead's writing is a vibrant historical record of the pristine, dangerous, and hazardous Kansas-Oklahoma region in the second half of the 19th century.
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