| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains. By Theodore Binnema. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. xvi, 263 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-8061-3361-9.)

In this carefully argued and well-researched study, the historian Theodore Binnema has examined the northwestern plains cultures at the point of Euro-American contact and before. He proves that there was far greater complexity than in the commonly accepted view that the cultures of various tribes fell victim to European contact in identical ways. The "common and contested ground" refers to the environmental relations among the various Native American groups as well as between the larger tribes and Europeans. Adding the full texture of interactions among native groups along with their relations with the environment explains dynamic native cultures of the precontact and contact northwestern plains.

In order to understand the ethnohistory of the region, Binnema argues, one must examine not only the relationships of large groups to one another but also the interactions of bands and even individuals. Depending on the various subsistence strategies bands developed, culturally similar communities were constantly dividing, merging, and even adopting new identities. The existence of abundant buffalo or the presence of guns or horses influenced those decisions.

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