"Drawing on a host of sources - oral histories, letters and journals, and agricultural and census records - Lynn-Sherow examines Oklahoma history from the Land Rush to statehood to show how each community viewed its land as a resource, what its members planted, how they cooperated, and whether they succeeded. Anglo settlers claimed the choice parcels, introduced mechanized farming, and planted corn and wheat, blacks tended to grow cotton on lands unsuited for its cultivation, and Kiowas strove to become pastoralists. Lynn-Sherow shows that as each group vied for control over its environment, its members imposed their own cultural views on the uses of nature - and on the legitimacy of the 'other' in their own relationship with the red earth."--BOOK JACKET.