Bison and People on the North American Great Plains: Deep Environmental History ed. by Geoff Cunfer and Bill Waiser (review)

Cunfer and Waiser's collection of essays, Bison and People on the North American Great Plainsmodels what a true "deep" environmental history should accomplish. Deliberately interdisciplinary, yet connected thematically and logically, Bison and Peoplebrings together decades of research and writing into a highly comprehensive and convincing — living, breathing and snorting — depiction of the long history of bison and people from pre-history to the present.

This is a work of both synthesis, in structure and in substance, and new research that is especially satisfying for historians of environmental history. Bison and Peoplecorrectly takes the bison's own ecological footprint as its geographical context; ignoring the political boundaries that placed unnecessary limits on earlier studies. In engaging historians of both the United States and Canada, with moveable bison at its core, this is a powerful collection of voices from both well-established specialists and promising new scholars.

Bison and Peopleupends a number of myths about the settlement of the North American West; introducing the role of First Nations and American Indian tribes' long tradition of trade in dried bison meat and their eventual role in the demise of the herds. Cunfer's introductory essay makes this perfectly clear without letting Euro-North Americans off the hook in creating markets for hides, unleashing new technologies (horses and guns) as well as creating hardship for Indigenous populations through policy and trade.

Interpretatively framed in three sections: the ancient past, acceleration, and tipping point, these twelve essays build seamlessly, digging ever more deeply into the available evidence. This is clear in the transition from Alwynne B. Beaudoin's well-illustrated study of the relationship of bison to their ideal environments to Jack W. Brink's study of hunters' quest for fat bison. Beaudoin concludes that "climate or environmental condition cannot have been a major cause of bison decline" (77). Brink follows with evidence of hunters' objective for certain animals and the physical consequences of that trajectory to help us "understand how historic hunting contributed to the near demise of the bison herds" (90). George Colpitts's chapter on the Métis' summer market hunt brings needed balance to US environmental historians' work on the southern plains of the United States. In linking climate, economics and the physical limits of the herds, Colpitts helps place the role of the 49th parallel into perspective — as a secondary predictor of behaviour. And as he notes in the conclusion, "It may be that 'being and becoming Metis' had more to do with Aboriginal people being and becoming market hunters." This is an intriguing contrast to historians' usual focus on the blending of Aboriginal and French culture.

Stalking strategically and chronologically from one perspective to another, chapters make a 360 degree circle around the central question of what actually happened to North America's largest land mammal. From the "horse man's view" to legislators' views to the Lakota nation, each chapter supports the case for deep environmental history. Noticeably lacking from these views, however, is the role of women in this reproductively dynamic story. This is surprising given the deep historiography, especially in Canada, of the role of women in the production of pemmican and clothing production. Cunfer sidesteps women with collective terms such as "Metis hunters" and "plains settlers" and a glancing note that as horses made bison a central feature of native life "some have argued" that this meant a "diminution of power for women" (15). In a volume that designates the differences between bison cows, calves, and bulls as having explanatory power, the lack of a human woman's — from any culture's — point of view is especially glaring.

Perhaps some of the volume's oversight in not including women's perspectives is mitigated by Jennifer Hansen's excellent essay on the "Tanner's View" of...