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The book started off with an introduction to the great plains. Webb describe the Great Plains as level, treeless, and sub-humid. Which is not entirely true sense there are places in the Great Plains which are not. Then Webb went into talking about the Physical things about the plains. Some examples would be the land, weather, plants, and animals. He also described how the Great plains were formed. Then Webb started talking about the Plains Indians. I found Webb to be a bit racist calling them savages. He did talk about them being really good horsemen, for example the Comanches. He said the Comanche Tribe was an ugly tribe, the way they look was not beautiful, but the way they rode their horses made you forget their ugliness and looked upon the beauty of their riding.

The book then went into the American and Spanish approach to the Great Plains. I found the Spanish approach to be very boring. It was a bunch of people I had never heard of trying to conquer. I did know one of the names and it was Coronado. This part with his exploring did interest me a bit. The other approach was the Americans. I could go on for hours about this chapter because I found this one to be the most interesting part of the book. Maybe it was because I knew more of the people that were exploring the land. Also the part on the six shooter and how it developed and was used in war was really interesting. I knew it was a big part of the "cowboys and outlaws" but I didn't think it played that big a role with the Texas Rangers and the battle against the Indians.

Webb then talks about the Cattle Kingdom and the origin of it was in Texas. He talked about the expansion of the Cattle Kingdom going into the Dakotas and other parts of the Great Plains. I am not really interested in cattle so the chapter bored me to sleep a bunch of times and i had a lot of trouble getting though this chapter. Once I did, the chapter about transportation and fencing came up. I found the facts about the cost of the railroads and fencing to be a surprise. I thought it would have been a little more expensive but then it was around a 70 years sense he wrote this book. Then he went into talking about the search for water, and then talking about the laws for land and the water that they had found. Then he went into talking about the songs and literature in the Plains, and it was a bit amusing to learn what they sung and wrote about and how different it is from today. The book ended with a little mystery in the Great Plains. Even though it isn't the great hard core mysteries we read about today it still had a little affect of my curiosity.

Matthew Lee