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barbed wire

(Encyclopedia) barbed wire, wire composed of two zinc-coated steel strands twisted together and having barbs spaced regularly along them. The need for barbed wire arose in the 19th cent. as the…

Pecos National Historical Park

(Encyclopedia) Pecos National Historical Park, 6,671 acres (2,702 hectares), N New Mexico; est. as a national monument 1965, designated a national historical park 1990. The park contains the remains…

Morris, Wright

(Encyclopedia) Morris, Wright (Wright Marion Morris), 1910–98, American writer, b. Central City, Nebr. He was for many years professor of English at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco…

prairie schooner

(Encyclopedia) prairie schooner, wagon covered with white canvas, made famous by its almost universal use in the migration across the Western prairies and plains, and so called in allusion to the…

calumet, peace pipe

(Encyclopedia) calumet [Fr.,=reed], name given by the French to the peace pipe used by the indigenous people of North America for smoking tobacco; it consisted of a long, feathered stem, with or…

towhee

(Encyclopedia) towheetowheetōˈhē, tōhēˈ, t&oomacr;ˈhē [key], common name for a North American bird of the family Fringillidae (finch family). Towhees are also called chewinks, for their call, and…

phalarope

(Encyclopedia) phalaropephalaropefălˈərōpˌ [key], common name for members of the family Phalaropodidae, shore birds, called “little swimming sandpipers.” Phalaropes, small, dainty birds with webbed…

pipit

(Encyclopedia) pipit, common name for a group of chiefly Eurasian and African birds that together with the wagtails constitute a subfamily of songbirds related to the Old World warblers and thrushes…

Shoshone

(Encyclopedia) Shoshone or ShoshoniShoshoneshəshōˈnē [key], Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Shoshonean group of the Uto-Aztecan branch of the Aztec-Tanoan linguistic stock (see…

Bannock

(Encyclopedia) BannockBannockbănˈək [key], Native North Americans who formerly ranged over wide territory of the N Great Plains and into the foothills of the Rocky Mts. They were concentrated in S…