Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1998
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall 1998, pp. 341-42
Abstract
One of the last unexplored areas of the globe, Dunlop explains, was the American interior. Unable to make the exotic journey to unexplored areas like the polar icecaps, world travelers set out for America. What they saw-what their impressions were-is the subject of Dunlop's book. She uses 300 travel records, most written by Europeans, as representative of the travelers' impressions. The study is thematically organized around such issues as impressions of Native Americans and reactions to the food and food service of the interior; it is rich in synecdoche and benefits from Dunlop's masterful weaving together of various similar and contrasting accounts and from her own imaginative literary style. It offers historians of the Midwest and Great Plains an excellent source of original impressions of the area.
Making no grand claims about any universal impression travelers were left with after their journeys, Dunlop takes pains to emphasize the diversity of opinions among travelers. She does not always attempt to explain this diversity of opinion, however, which might have been done by paying greater attention to her travelers' personal biographies.
Comments
Copyright 1998 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska- Lincoln