This collection of essays by some of the most respected American legal scholars represents the first investigation of the legal history of the Great Plains. It challenges existing theories about the legal culture of the region by showing the area's distinctiveness. The four-part study offers overviews of law and the region, analyzes landmark cases, discusses the impact of important legal thinkers, and provides a short history and case studies of the work of leading jurists. Designed to whet the appetite of legal scholars and historians who want to consider new ideas and study a little-known field. This provocative work developed from the first conference ever held on law and the Great Plains. The contributors and the participants addressed fundamental questions about race, ethnicity, and civil rights and the legal culture of the region. This study is designed to whet the appetite of legal scholars and historians who want to consider new ideas and study a little-known field.

The nine essays presented by John R. Wunder collectively expose the domestic and technological details of American pioneer life on the High Plains. The essays, each written by a leading authority in the field, examine such topics as early ranching and farming in the Rio Grande Valley and the Staked Plains; the impact on Native American and settler women of life on the agricultural frontier; the response to perceived threats by agriculturalists after the Civil War; and the agriculturalists' entry into the twentieth century via their response to cultural change. The final chapter, a speech made in 1890 by a Scottish traveller, contains a contemporary observation of the real and mythical qualities of life on the frontier.

This collection of twelve original essays explores the history of people interacting with the land. The first section examines how Native Americans attempted to maintain control of their lands. The second includes three essays that are concerned with land speculation, from the earliest penetration of the Europeans into the interior of America to the last frontiers of West Texas and Northern Mexico. A third section considers land policy and governmental attempts at regulation. The fourth documents environmental abuse and alteration by politicians as well as agriculturalists, farmers, and ranchers. Human interaction with the land is thus highlighted as westward expansion is chronicled.

A detailed, exhaustively researched examination of the justice of the peace in one frontier area, the Pacific Northwest.