Reviewed by:

• The Chisholm Trail: Joseph McCoy's Great Gamble by James E. Sherrow
• Tim Lehman

Sherrow's view of the Chisholm Trail is not the typical vision of a lonely cattle trail connecting Texas cattle with Kansas railroads. Rather, it is a conceptually and spatially enlarged portrait [End Page 242] of cattle movements that links Texas longhorns to New York dinner tables, and it places cattle herding at the center of the nineteenth-century ecological transformation of the Great Plains. Railroads as well as steamships transported cattle to meet the urban demand for beef, and in Sherrow's expansive treatment, all forms of cattle locomotion were equivalent in that they relied on "stored solar energy," either grass or coal. At the heart of his analysis is the risk-taking cattle entrepreneur Joseph McCoy and the Chisholm Trail, the cattle path that enabled the alteration of the Great Plains from a grassland managed by bison-hunting Indians to a cultivated landscape shaped by American farmers.

Sherrow's understanding of this enlarged Chisholm Trail leads to important insights. Under the pressure of cattle grazing, tall grasses (mostly bluestem) were replaced by shorter grasses, especially buffalo grass, which eventually succumbed to wheat and other domesticated grasses. Sherrow argues that cattle movements created a transitional ecosystem that cleared the way for American farm culture. He is especially strong in his analysis of prairie fires, common and life-sustaining under a tallgrass-bison regime but suppressed by cattle drovers, ultimately making cultivation easier for farmers. Another significant contribution of this book is the detailed attention to climate data, which explains why the open range system of cattle grazing, so common in Texas, did not work in the colder Kansas climate.

Such a sprawling reach gives the book a wide embrace, but also leads to some repetition and rambling digressions. A tighter focus would allow for more attention to the nature of longhorns, so good on the trail but so bad on the railroad car or dinner table. The conflict between Native nations who saw water and grass as rightfully theirs, and Texas drovers who viewed public domain water and grass as "free for the taking" (122), might be explored more fully, especially for McCoy's complicated role in this fraught relationship.

As the subtitle suggests, Joseph McCoy saw his investments in the Chisholm Trail as part of a great cattle faro game. This makes a wonderful unifying metaphor for the book and suggests that McCoy's great gamble is still a drama in progress.

审核人：

• 奇索姆（Chisholm）小径：约瑟夫·麦考伊（James E. Sherrow）的《大赌注》
• 蒂姆·雷曼（Tim Lehman）

谢罗（Sherrow）对奇斯霍尔姆（Chisholm）步道的看法不是将德克萨斯州的牛群与堪萨斯州的铁路连接起来的孤独的牛道的典型构想。相反，它是在概念上和空间上放大的肖像[End Page 242]牛群运动将德克萨斯州的长角牛与纽约餐桌相连，并将牛群置于大平原19世纪生态转型的中心。铁路和汽轮运输牛来满足城市对牛肉的需求，在谢罗（Sherrow）的宽容处理中，所有形式的牛运动都是等同的，因为它们依赖于“储存的太阳能”，无论是草还是煤。他的分析的核心是冒险的养牛企业家约瑟夫·麦考伊（Joseph McCoy）和奇斯霍尔姆步道（Chisholm Trail），这条牛道使大平原从野牛狩猎印第安人管理的草原变成了美国农民塑造的耕地。

Sherrow对这座扩大的Chisholm步道的理解带来了重要的见解。在放牧牛的压力下，高矮的草（大多是蓝茎草）被矮些的草代替，尤其是水牛草，它们最终屈服于小麦和其他驯化的草。Sherrow认为，牛的运动创造了一个过渡的生态系统，为美国的农场文化扫清了道路。他对草原大火的分析特别有力，在高草木牛的统治下，草原大火是常见的和维持生命的，但被牛群压制了，最终使农民的耕作更加容易。本书的另一个重要贡献是对气候数据的详细关注，这解释了为什么在德克萨斯州普遍存在的开放式放牧牛群系统在堪萨斯州较冷的气候下不起作用。

如此广泛的覆盖面使本书广受好评，但也导致了一些重复和漫无目的的题外话。更加集中的注意力将使人们更多地关注长角牛的本质，在长途跋涉中表现不错，而在有轨电车或餐桌上则表现不佳。也许可以更充分地探讨以水和草为生的土著民族与以公共领域的水和草为“免费取食”的得克萨斯驾车者之间的冲突（122），尤其是对于麦考伊在这种烦恼的关系中所起的复杂作用。 。

正如副标题所暗示的那样，约瑟夫·麦科伊（Joseph McCoy）将自己在奇斯霍尔姆步道（Chisholm Trail）上的投资视为一场伟大的牛法鲁游戏的一部分。这是本书的一个很好的统一比喻，表明麦考伊的伟大赌博仍在进行中。