Damming the Osage

Only fragments remain of the native prairies of the upper Osage watershed. It¿s been two centuries since the warrior culture for which the river is named, and who maintained the buffalo grasslands by fire, was pushed west by displaced Eastern tribes and land-hungry Americans. Two massive dams have turned the main stem of the river into huge reservoirs. Leland and Crystal Payton find the tale of these transformations compelling, turbulent, sometimes criminal. In journals of soldiers,...
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Only fragments remain of the native prairies of the upper Osage watershed. It¿s been two centuries since the warrior culture for which the river is named, and who maintained the buffalo grasslands by fire, was pushed west by displaced Eastern tribes and land-hungry Americans. Two massive dams have turned the main stem of the river into huge reservoirs. Leland and Crystal Payton find the tale of these transformations compelling, turbulent, sometimes criminal. In journals of soldiers, explorers, missionaries, and in old newspaper accounts and court documents, they discovered a cast of passionate and sometimes doomed personalities. If changed by development, the authors find the present Osage valley landscape expressive. Damming The Osage presents scientific objections to multipurpose dams. The authors also protest the lack of realism in popular history, journalism and advertising. This critique, the Paytons acknowledge, is derived from Mark Twain, the arch enemy of Romanticism. The region¿s history certainly abounds in the kind of characters and action Twain loved. Civil War bushwhackers vs. Kansas Jayhawkers; outlaw Younger brothers vs. Pinkerton detectives; merchants vs. farmers ¿all battled within the Osage River valley. The Paytons agree with Twain that American history, raw and contentious as it may be, demands truthful literary treatment. With 435 contemporary color photographs, period maps and vintage images, this book tells a dramatic story of human ambition pitted against natural limitations and forces beyond control. Changes caused by massive water resource development have rarely been examined with such sharp focus and never better illustrated.