Introduction | 1

1. A Unified Field Theory of the Great Plains |17

2. Exploring the Explorers | 45

3. Spiritual and Intellectual Resistance to Conquest, Part1: Custer and Riel | 63

4. Spiritual and Intellectual Resistance to Conquest, Part2: Messianism, the 1885NorthwestResistance, and the 1890Lakota Ghost Dance | 79

5. Spiritual and Intellectual Resistance to Conquest, Part3: John Joseph Mathews’ Wah’Kon-Tah and John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks | 111

6. Intellectual Justification for Conquest: Comparative Historiography of the Canadian and US Wests | 127

7. Homesteading as Capital Formation on the Great Plains | 143

8. The Women’s West | 167

9. And Still the Waters | 185

10. Dust Bowls | 205

11. Mitigating but Not Rethinking: George W. Norris, Tommy Douglas, and the Great Plains | 217

12. Planning and Economic Theory | 243

13. Mouse Beans and Drowned Rivers | 265

14. Oil | 275

15. Arts, Justice, and Hope on the Great Plains | 291

Conclusion | 319

Notes | 333

Credits | 365

Index | 367