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Walter Webb's "Great American Plains" is a timeless interpretation of the nature of the Great Plains and how they have mercilessly whipped European settlers into a condition to thrive on its wild frontier. But as Webb explains it has been a been years of trial and error and disregarding "traditional" practices to get to a point where we can come to terms with the landscape and live within it. The plains being "treeless, semi-arid, and flat" presented many problems for the early settlers. When settlers first entered the Great Plains they naively planted eastern variety of plants that flourish only in easterly conditions. They also ran into the issue of lack of recognizable building material as lumber and stone was not readily available in the vast stretches of land. Even the mere task of dividing land via fences became an a real issue for the inexperienced plains people. A lack of navigableness rivers and developed railroads greatly hindered people ability to develop an economy as great as that found out east or on the west coast.
But as Webb would claim, the people of the plains began to adapt to the land making a fruitful life on the plains possible. People began to recognize that till farming and using eastern variates of plants would not work and botanists and eastern Europeans introduced drought hardy plants that would grow on the plains. Sod houses designs were developed and barbed wire was introduced to compensate for the lack of timber and railroads were developed to stretch the long distances between markets. The people flourished not by practices developed in the East, but by there own practices. A new culture had been developed. One that was suitable for the Plains.
It may have developed a bias from reading other blogs but I feel that a gaping hole in the thesis is that lack of a cross comparison of the development between the American and Canadian Plains. This may have brought to light how culture and accidental discover did indeed help shape our living on the Plains.
Regardless, I have enjoyed Webb's interpretation of how we have adapted to the land but fear that we are now in a process of stepping backwards. We are now thriving on the Plains not by living within them but by overpowering them with technology. We are putting ourselves above the planet forgetting vernacular practices that helped us grow and exchanging them for generic practices that are the same in the Plains, Rocky Mountains, and the Forests of the East. How long do have until we must revert back to our roots and develop our built environment and lives within the Plains rather that over them?