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The book "The Great Plains" by Walter Prescott Webb is about the interaction between the Great Plains and the people who inhabited it. He starts out the book by stating that the three main characteristics of the Great Plains are that they are level, treeless, and semi-arid. The book goes on to talk about several different categories that are significant to the plains area. Some of these categories are Indians, cowboys, the cattle kingdom, the six shooter, different explorers and nationalities such as the Spainiards that came to the Great Plains, barbed wire, the problems of drought and irrigation, and much more. Webb's thesis that people must adapt to the environment in order to survive is evident throughout the entire book.

It is interesting if we look at how Webb represents and feels about the Native Americans of the plains. He tells of the ways the Native Americans use horses in battle and the ways they use sighn language and says how well they adapt to the landscape. But he also refers to them as savages, which they might have seemed to the white settlers of the area. I wonder if this is because of the times in which the book was published or what because it would seem the white settlers were the ones invading the Native Americans territory so they seem more like savages than the Indians. They were just defending what had always been there's.

I found the section on the six shooter to be the most entertaining section. The six shooter gave the whites the edge over the Indians for the battle of the plains. It is crazy to think of a revolver winning a war compared to what was used in the 1900s and is used today. This shows how we use technology to adapt to our times and enemies. A huge part of the book dealt with the cattle kingdom and cowboys roaming the Great Plains. Several adaptations needed to be made such as barbed wire and windmills for water. I can't imagine what a struggle it would be to roam or farm the plains being how dry and arid it is. Without adaptions for dry farming and irrigation this would never have been possible.

Overall, the book goes into much detail about what the plains were and are like even today. I feel that there must have been some stuff left out since there was hardly any mention of women on the plains. This might also have to do with the period in which the book was published.