Book Review

Canada and the United States

Simple stories are straightforward and reassuring in their accessibility. This is not a simple story, but it is one satisfying in its ampleness and complexity. Andrew C. Isenberg takes the accepted historical narrative stressing Euro-American responsibility for the destruction of North American bison and complicates it by weaving in "the interactions among ecology, economy, and culture" (p. 4). Isenberg's work challenges us to think multicausally; to embrace the dynamism of cultural and environmental systems instead of assuming long term stasis; to understand the consequences of interacting systems, which effect new ecological and cultural permutations; and to see humans as part of rather than apart from their natural world, as actors rather than as simple victims or victimizers.

1

Isenberg divides his study into six chapters that both overlap and build upon each other. Chapter one describes grasslands environments and bison ecology in dense detail—a wake up call for historians to take biological processes seriously. Isenberg emphasizes environmental dynamism and the volatility of bison populations predating large scale exploitation of the Plains, arguing that human agency alone is insufficient to account for the near extinction of bison. Isenberg then describes the emergence of "nomad" Indians who moved out onto the Plains. He argues that the European biological invasion of horses and disease undermined the more sedentary village lifestyles and the diversified subsistence strategies of some Plains groups—hence his distinction between emerging buffalo hunting "nomads" (a convenient if problematic term for those moving seasonally through known or expanding territories) and village-dwelling Plains Indians who also hunted buffalo.

. . .