'Buffalo Commons' agitators in good company

By Richard Mize

Published: February 9, 2008

NORMAN — History geeks will appreciate this, especially historians and fans of the American West: I scored Frank and Deborah Popper's autographs in a first edition of historian Walter Prescott Webb's influential 1931 work, "The Great Plains.”

The Poppers came to the University of Oklahoma to give an update on their controversial ideas on the "Buffalo Commons,” which first hit headlines — and hit residents of the Plains where it hurt — 20 years ago.

The main idea: The Plains are emptying, with big consequences ahead unless somebody does something — maybe turn all that empty real estate over to buffalo.

The Poppers signed the first page. On the inside cover is one of those ID stickers that says "Buffalo Commons Public Lecture,” below which I penciled my name and "The Oklahoman.” If I ever make the big time, the book might be worth something.

The Webb book now goes alongside my copy of "Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West,” the 1987 work, as important, but in a different way, as Webb's, by author-scholar-uber-Westerner Patricia Nelson Limerick.

Limerick, chairman of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, was gracious enough to thoughtfully inscribe it for me, and engage me in my own primary history interest — the Choctaw Indians in the 19th century — last year at a dinner party in Boulder, Colo.

Mize said with a sniff.

Yes. I can be a history snob, especially when it comes to rubbing elbows with those who have most influenced people's perceptions of the West and Great Plains, my home now for almost a quarter-century.

My first stomping grounds, in the cropland of the Arkansas River Valley and the woods of the Ozarks, in extreme eastern Oklahoma — the South, culturally, geographically and historically — will always be near to my heart.

But the Plains stole my heart and mind years ago, outside Electra, Texas, the first time I ever saw an entire thunderstorm, top to bottom and side to side. It was barreling across the vast (510,000-acre) Waggoner Ranch. You can't see that in the woodland hills.

Captivated, I drove off the road — not a problem on those rolling plains, where the rights of way were as wide as my eyes.

Webb's argument: The Great Plains, from the 98th Meridian to the Western Slope of the Rockies, are so radically different from the rest of the country, so little rainfall, so little timber, that the environment itself caused settlers to adapt and develop special technologies and new modes of living to survive.

Webb's contemporaries scoffed at his criticism of federal policy encouraging the conversion of Plains grasslands to croplands using irrigation. Nowadays, many see him as a prophet.

Limerick's argument: Dueling images of Westerners as "independent” yet "victims” — they're myths.

On the first point, the West has resisted federal involvement even as it reaches for federal largesse. On the second, Anglos came as conquerors — of the West's natural resources and native peoples — and stayed as conquerors, not mere settlers, and not victims.

Limerick, with her revisionist synthesis of "new” thinking — it sparked the term "New Western History” — attracted criticism for daring to write negatively of the West, among other things. Others saw her as a kind of prophet, the kind that gives new meaning to what is, rather than a seer who forecasts what will be.

The Poppers hit the news, the lecture circuit, the annals of the West and the Great Plains — and the fan — after they started talking about the Buffalo Commons. "Egghead East Coast liberals,” some said. "Prophets,” others said.

What the Poppers actually were saying was much different: The Plains, the site of boom after bust after boom after bust since the 1880s, were already emptying — of people, of commerce, of social institutions, of water — probably for good.

To keep the heartland of the country from becoming a wasteland, government and private organizations should take steps to foster those trends rather than thwart and twist them, the Poppers said.

And they have.

Plains states are still losing population. Water is a bigger issue now that it was in the 1980s. Natural resources continue to be depleted.

But some officials who opposed the Poppers then have seen the light, and nonprofit groups and Indian tribes are taking concrete steps to break the cycles of boom and bust, and set aside land for posterity — and for buffalo.

Twenty years ago, the Poppers got a chilly reception in Oklahoma. This time they were warmly received.

Like Webb and Limerick, the Poppers, who are planners, not historians, initially rebuked by contemporaries, have earned their place in the history and historiography of the West. As troublemakers. As agitators. As thinkers.

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