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Winner, ISHS Superior Achievement Award for a Scholarly Publication, 2016 A concise legal history of Illinois through the end of the nineteenth century, Prairie Justice covers the region's progression from French to British to early American legal systems, which culminated in a unique body of Illinois law that has influenced other jurisdictions. Written by Roger L. Severns in the 1950s and published in serial form in the 1960s, Prairie Justice is available now for the first time as a book, thanks to the work of editor John A. Lupton, an Illinois and legal historian who also contributed an introduction. Illinois'legal development demonstrates the tension between two completely different European legal systems, between river communities and prairie towns, and between agrarian and urban interests. Severns uses several rulings—including a reconstitution of the Supreme Court in 1824, slavery-related cases, and the impeachment of a Supreme Court justice—to examine political movements in Illinois and their impact on the local judiciary. Through legal decisions, the Illinois judiciary became an independent, co-equal branch of state government. By the mid-nineteenth century, Illinois had established itself as a leading judicial authority, influencing not only the growing western frontier but also the industrialized and farming regions of the country. With a close eye for detail, Severns reviews the status of the legal profession during the 1850s by looking new members of the Court, the nostalgia of circuit riding, and how a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln rose to prominence. Illinois has a rich judicial history, but that history has not been adequately documented until now. With the publication of Prairie Justice, those interested in Illinois legal history finally have a book that covers the development of the state's judiciary in its formative years.

From the 1830s onward, a succession of well-born Britons headed to the American wilderness to find fulfilment. They brought their dogs, valets and the attitudes and prejudices of their class with them. With comic detail, Peter Pagnamenta shows what the locals made of the newcomers as they crossed the country to see the Indians, hunted buffalo and eventually built cattle empires. But as the British became big American landowners, they found themselves attacked as land vultures attempting a new colonisation. Pagnamenta's wonderful account shows the enthusiasm of the British for new horizons, set against the rise of a modern nation that would eclipse them.

Prairie Power, a superb collection of oral histories from the 1960s, focuses on former student radicals at the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, and Southern Illinois University. Robbie Lieberman presents a view of Midwestern New Left activists that has been neglected in previous studies. Scholarship on the sixties has been shifting from a national focus to more local and regional studies, but few authors have studied the student movement in the Midwest. Moreover, the characterization of prairie power activists as “long-haired, dope-smoking anarchists” who were responsible for the downfall of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) has not been challenged directly. While still viewing these activists critically, Lieberman argues that Midwestern students made significant contributions to the New Left in the latter half of the decade, and that their efforts were not only important at the time but also had a lasting impact on the universities and towns in which they were active. The author begins by explaining “prairie power” and establishing its significance in the history of 1960s protest. She then presents the oral histories in three parts. The first section reveals what “prairie power” meant to national leaders of SDS who were regional organizers in the Midwest. The second section of oral histories gives insight into the backgrounds, concerns, and activities of local leaders from the three universities who were homegrown Midwestern activists. Lieberman shows that while the national leaders take credit for organizing on several college campuses, the local activists often felt that they were on their own. The third group of oral histories—from grassroots activists—is what most sets this book apart from previous works on the student New Left. These are students who joined demonstrations on their own campuses but did not necessarily identify with either local or national organizations. Their rarely heard voices help provide a better understanding of who participated in the student protest movement, why they were involved, and how their activities profoundly affected their lives for years to come. Prairie Power makes a significant contribution toward a more comprehensive history of student activism in the turbulent 1960s.

Albert Coryer, the grandson of a fur trade voyageur-turned-farmer, had a gift for storytelling. Born in 1877, he grew up in Prairie du Chien hearing tales of days gone by from his parents, grandparents, and neighbors who lived in the Frenchtown area. Throughout his life, Albert soaked up the local oral traditions, including narratives about early residents, local landmarks, interesting and funny events, ethnic customs, myths, and folklore. Late in life, this lively man who had worked as a farm laborer and janitor drew a detailed illustrated map of the Prairie du Chien area and began to write his stories out longhand, in addition to sharing them in an interview with a local historian and folklore scholar. The map, stories, and interview transcript provide a colorful account of Prairie du Chien in the late nineteenth century, when it was undergoing significant demographic, social, and economic change. With sharp historical context provided by editors Lucy Eldersveld Murphy and Mary Elise Antoine, Coryer's tales offer an unparalleled window into the ethnic community comprised of the old fur trade families, Native Americans, French Canadian farmers, and their descendants.

Cavalry units from Midwestern states remain largely absent from Civil War literature, and what little has been written largely overlooks the individual men who served. The Fifth Illinois Cavalry has thus remained obscure despite participating in some of the most important campaigns in Arkansas and Mississippi. In this pioneering examination of that understudied regiment, Rhonda M. Kohl offers the only modern, comprehensive analysis of a southern Illinois regiment during the Civil War and combines well-documented military history with a cultural analysis of the men who served in the Fifth Illinois. The regiment's history unfolds around major events in the Western Theater from 1861 to September 1865, including campaigns at Helena, Vicksburg, Jackson, and Meridian, as well as numerous little-known skirmishes. Although they were led almost exclusively by Northern-born Republicans, the majority of the soldiers in the Fifth Illinois remained Democrats. As Kohl demonstrates, politics, economics, education, social values, and racism separated the line officers from the common soldiers, and the internal friction caused by these cultural disparities led to poor leadership, low morale, disciplinary problems, and rampant alcoholism. The narrative pulls the Fifth Illinois out of historical oblivion, elucidating the highs and lows of the soldiers'service as well as their changing attitudes toward war goals, religion, liberty, commanding generals, Copperheads, and alcoholism. By reconstructing the cultural context of Fifth Illinois soldiers, Prairie Boys Go to War reveals how social and economic traditions can shape the wartime experience.

@font-face { font-family:'Palatino';}@font-face { font-family:'?????? Pro W3';}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family:'Times New Roman'; }p.FreeForm, li.FreeForm, div.FreeForm { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family:'Times New Roman'; color: black; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } In the 1880s, the well-connected young Englishman William B. Close and his three brothers, having bought thousands of acres of northwest Iowa prairie, conceived the idea of enticing sons of Britain's upper classes to pursue the life of the landed gentry on these fertile acres. “Yesterday a wilderness, today an empire”: their bizarre experiment, which created a colony for people “of the better class” who were not in line to inherit land but whose fathers would set them up in farming, flourished in Le Mars, Iowa (and later in Pipestone, Minnesota), with over five hundred youths having a go at farming. In Gentlemen on the Prairie, Curtis Harnack tells the remarkable story of this quite unusual chapter in the settling of the Midwest. Many of these immigrants had no interest in American citizenship but enjoyed or endured the challenging adventure of remaining part of the empire while stranded on the plains. They didn't mix socially with other Le Mars area residents but enjoyed such sports as horse racing, fox hunts, polo, and an annual derby followed by a glittering grand ball. Their pubs were named the House of Lords, the House of Commons, and Windsor Castle; the Prairie Club was a replica of a London gentlemen's club, an opera house attracted traveling shows, and their principal hotel was Albion House. In St. George's Episcopal Church, prayers were offered for the well-being of Queen Victoria. Problems soon surfaced, however, even for these well-heeled aristocrats. The chief problem was farm labor; there was no native population to exploit, and immigrant workers soon bought their own land. Although sisters might visit the colonists and sometimes marry one of them, appropriate female companionship was scarce. The climate was brutal in its extremes, and many colonists soon sold their acres at a profit and moved to countries affiliated with Britain. When the financial depression in the early 1890s lowered land values and made agriculture less profitable, the colony collapsed. Harnack skillfully draws upon the founder's “Prairie Journal,” company ledgers, and other records to create an engaging, engrossing story of this quixotic pioneering experiment.

A fight breaks out over a claim in this action-filled homesteading story. The hardships of covered wagon life, the danger of the prairie fire, and the romance of the young bride's new home made this a best-seller in 1869. One of the things that made dime novels so popular was the lurid cover art. These scandalous imaged caught the attention of readers and, indeed, the ellicit nature of the stories was most appealing. Publishers capitalized on the interests of young female readers, especially, bringing tales of strong, willful heroines to life between the cheap paper covers of these books.

With the goal of sketching “at least some of the bright lights and dark shadows of the war;” William Baxter authored his regional classic, Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove, in 1864, before the actual end of the Civil War. Primarily focusing on the civilians of the region, Baxter vividly describes their precarious and vulnerable positions during the advances and retreats of armies as Confederate and Federal forces marched across their homeland. In his account, Baxter describes skirmishes and cavalry charges outside his front door, the “firing” of his town's buildings during a Confederate retreat, clashes between secessionist and Unionist neighbors, the feeding of hungry soldiers and the forceful appropriation of his remaining food supply, and the sickening sight of the wounded emerging from the Prairie Grove battlefield. Since its original printing, this firsthand account has only been reprinted once, in 1957, and both editions are considered collectors'items today. Of interest to Civil War scholars and general readers alike, Baxter's compelling social history is rendered even more comprehensive by William Shea's introduction. Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove is a valuable personal account of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi West which enables us to better comprehend the conflict as a whole and its devastating effect on the general populace of the war-torn portions of the country.

“His­tory as They Lived It deserves to be placed within the rich context of Illinois Country historiography going back more than a century.... It brings together the fully ripened thoughts of a mature scholar at the very moment that students of the Illinois Country need such a book.”—from the foreword by Carl J. Ekberg Settled in 1722, Prairie du Rocher was at the geographic center of a French colony in the Mississippi Valley, which also included other villages in what is now Illinois and Missouri: Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Fort de Chartres, St. Philippe, Ste. Genevieve, and St. Louis. Located in an alluvial valley near towering limestone bluffs, which inspired the village's name—French for “prairie of the rock”— Prairie du Rocher is the only one of the seven French colonial villages that still exists today as a small compact community. The village of Prairie du Rocher endured governance by France, Great Britain, Virginia, and the Illinois territory before Illinois became a state in 1818. Despite these changes, the villagers persisted in maintaining the community and its values. Margaret Kimball Brown looks at one of the oldest towns in the region through the lenses of history and anthropology, utilizing extensive research in archives and public records to give historians, anthropologists, and general readers a lively depiction of this small community and its people.

In The War of 1812 in Wisconsin, author Mary Elise Antoine brings a little-known corner of Wisconsin's history to life. Prairie du Chien, located just above mouth of the Wisconsin River, was the key to trade on the upper Mississippi. Whoever controlled the prairie commanded the immense territory inhabited by thousands of American Indians—and the fur they traded. When war broke out between the United States and Great Britain in 1812, British and Americans fought to maintain the ever-shifting alliance of the tribes. This is the story of the battle for the control of Prairie du Chien and the western country, which began many years before the three-day siege in July of 1814 for which the Battle of Prairie du Chien is named. It is also the tale of the people, Euro-American and Native, who lived in pre-territorial Wisconsin and how the contest for control of the region affected their lives and livelihoods. The outcome of the War of 1812 would determine what'manifest destiny'would mean to all who called these lands home.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 made slavery illegal in the territory that would later become Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. However, many Black individuals'rights were denied by white enslavers who continued to hold them captive in the territory well into the nineteenth century. Set in this period of American history, Enslaved, Indentured, Free shines a light on five extraordinary Black women—Marianne, Mariah, Patsey, Rachel, and Courtney—whose lives intersected in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Focusing on these five women, Mary Elise Antoine explores the history of slavery in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, relying on legal documents, military records, court transcripts, and personal correspondence. Whether through perseverance, self-purchase, or freedom suits—including one suit that was used as precedent in Dred and Harriet Scott's freedom suits years later—each of these women ultimately secured her freedom, thanks in part to the bonds they forged with one another.

Despite the force of Oregon's founding mythology, the Willamette Valley was not an empty Eden awaiting settlement by hardy American pioneers. Rather, it was, as Melinda Jetté explores in At the Hearth of the Crossed Races, one of the earliest sites of extensive intercultural contact in the Pacific Northwest. Jetté's study focuses on the “hearth” of this contact: French Prairie, so named for the French-Indian families who resettled the homeland of the Ahantchuyuk Kalapuyans. Although these families sought a middle course in their relations with their various neighbors, their presence ultimately contributed to the Anglo-American colonization of the region. By establishing farming and husbandry operations in the valley, the French-Indian settlers enhanced the Willamette Valley's appeal as a destination of choice for the Anglo-Americans who later emigrated to the Pacific Northwest via the Oregon Trail. Upon these emigrants'arrival, the social space for the people of the “crossed races” diminished considerably, as the Anglo-Americans instituted a system of settler colonialism based on racial exclusion. Like their Native kin, the French-Indian families pursued various strategies to navigate the changing times and Jetté's study of French Prairie takes on the relationships among all three: the French-Indian families, the indigenous peoples, and the Anglo-American settlers. With At the Hearth of the Crossed Races, Jetté delivers a social history that deepens our understanding of the Oregon Country in the nineteenth century. This history of French Prairie provides a window into the multi-racial history of the Pacific Northwest and offers an alternative vision of early Oregon in the lives of the biracial French-Indian families whose community challenged notions of white supremacy, racial separation, and social exclusion.

The Opening of the Cybernetic Frontier is the third in-J. stallment in the Cities of the Prairie project. It completes an ongoing multi-generational, comparative study of ten medium-sized communities located in five Prairie and Plains states - Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Colorado. This long-term study was initiated by Daniel J. Elazar in 1959 to develop a comprehensive theory explaining and forecasting the development of the civil community based upon the changing relationship between internal developments and external factors.In this new volume, Elazar and his colleagues trace developments in these communities during the 1980s and 1990s. The study examines how local communities function politically, socially, and economically, and then analyzes the impact that regional, national, and international trends and patterns have on local political systems in general and the cities of the prairie in particular. It revisits these communities at the dawning of a new frontier, the city-cybernetic frontier, which is characterized by a knowledge-intensive economic base made possible by computer and communication technologies. Changing technology has accelerated the settlement patterns that emerged after World War II. Ongoing population sprawl means that individuals are leaving the suburbs to live in the exurbs and beyond, creating a citybelt phenomenon that relies upon new technologies.

In Reflecting a Prairie Town Drake Hokanson takes a prolonged look at a common place in an uncommon fashion. He presents Peterson, Iowa, through a singular combination of words and images, a remarkable synthesis of history, geography, direct observation, climatology, botany, oral history, archaeology, agricultural science, literature, geology, photography, and even a bit of astronomy. This vernacular landscape study is lavishly illustrated with photographs taken by the author, including stunning panoramic views. The fundamental truth of experience on this continent has always lain in the challenges and opportunities of space. Place mattered because we were so few before the immensity of the land. But place at the same time rooted us in that immensity. Even now our appreciation for place is not quite dead; locked in our urban environments we continue to crave a “view,” be it of mountains, forests, or prairies. These “views” crop up unexpectedly as photographic murals in office buildings or posters in dentists'offices. It is to this stifled sense of the importance of place that Hokanson speaks; he invites us to remember and to be revitalized. The magic of Reflecting a Prairie Town is the revelation that Peterson, Iowa, is a small town that is also uncannily large. In capturing the essence of this one place Hokanson helps us to understand our own worlds better—he asks the simple questions many of us would like to ask were we given the opportunity. To enter this book is to come back to a place we have never really seen before.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote stories that have defined the American frontier for generations of readers. As both author and character in her own books, she became one of the most famous figures in American children's literature. Her famous Little House on the Prairie series, based on her childhood in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, and South Dakota, blended memoir and fiction into a vivid depiction of nineteenth-century settler life that continues to shape many Americans'understanding of the country's past. Poised between fiction and fact, literature and history, Wilder's life is a fascinating window on the American West.Placing Wilder's life and work in historical context, and including previously unpublished material from the Wilder archives, Sallie Ketcham introduces students to domestic frontier life, the conflict between Native Americans and infringing white populations, and the West in public memory and imagination.

Skyros Publishing is dedicated to reproducing the finest books ever written and letting readers of all ages experience a classic for the first time or revisit a past favorite. Francis Parkman was a prominent American historian in the 19th century. Parkman's best work was his book on the Oregon Trail.

In Iowa Past to Present, originally published in 1989, Dorothy Schwieder, Thomas Morain, and Lynn Nielsen combine their extensive knowledge of Iowa's history with years of experience addressing the educational needs of elementary and middle-school students. Their skillful and accessible narrative brings alive the people and events that populate Iowa's rich heritage. This revised edition brings the story into the twenty-first century and makes a paperback edition available for the first time. Beginning with Iowa's changing geological landforms, the authors progress to historical, political, and social aspects of life in Iowa through the present day. The chapters explore such topics as the native peoples of the region; pioneer settlements on the prairie; the building of the railroad; the Civil War; the influence of immigrants; the formation of the state government and development of the current politic system; education; the Great Depression; religion (including a separate chapter on Mennonites and the Old Order Amish); life on the farm; business, industry, and economics; and the turmoil caused by World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. A new chapter written specifically for this edition explains the impact of 9/11 on Iowa, discusses the roles played by Iowa soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and updates information on the newest immigrant populations of the state. The authors have teamed with Iowa Public Television's Iowa Pathways project to create a new Iowa Past to Present teacher's guide available online at. This guide includes additional articles, videos, links, and curriculum resources to support the textbook. Iowa Past to Present, its inviting format enhanced by hundreds of illustrations, is informed by three of the state's most respected historians. The latest revision continues to be an important part of the curriculum for teachers and parents wanting their children to know all about Iowa history.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn is one of the best-known events in the history of the American West. Questions surrounding Custer's fate have been discussed and researched at length, but details about the transportation and logistics of military supplies have not been thoroughly investigated. Archaeologist Gerald Clark stumbled upon the remnants of a supply depot while surveying the area near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Powder Rivers. It turned out to have been established by General Terry during the Sioux War and utilized by Custer and part of the 7th Calvary. The book details the items recovered archaeologically, including ale and soda bottles, cartridges, packing crates, and a horseshoe and ceramic doll. It also addresses the army's knowledge of this area and how the supply depot fit into the broader military campaign. This book connects archaeology and history to explore how the American military planned, maneuvered, and operated on the northern plains from the end of the Civil War through 1876.

Between 1900 and 1915, in the last great land rush, over one hundred thousand homesteaders flooded into the west river country of South Dakota, a land noted for its aridity and unpredictable weather, its treelessness, and its endless sky. The settlers of “the last, best west” weathered their first crisis in the severe drought of 1910-1911, which winnowed out many of the speculators and faint of heart; they abandoned their founding hopes of quick success and substituted a new ethos of “next year country”—while this year was hard, next year would be better, an ironic phrase at once optimistic and fatalistic. “Next year,” however, was in many of those years not better. The collapse of the agricultural economy in the immediate aftermath of the boom years of World War I set in motion a pattern of regional decline amid national prosperity and cultural change: the rise of radio and mass culture increased rural folks'awareness of national trends and tastes, a development which paradoxically increased their own sense of remoteness and isolation. The failure of the farm economy to recover to any substantial degree in the twenties caused a less dramatic but cumulatively greater impact on the west river country's population and prospects—a second great crisis. The Great Depression and the dustbowl years of the thirties were the greatest test of the west river people. The drought of 1910-1911, heretofore seen as the benchmark of bad times, faded even in the remembrances of the original pioneers in the face of the thirties'relentless drought, grasshoppers, blowing dust, and the accompanying starvation, struggle, and despair. The Depression in the west river country was a blast furnace from which a hardened yet still hopeful people emerged, scathed but undefeated. The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own is the voice of this experience.

Established in 1884 and operative for nearly a century, the Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma was one of a series of off-reservation boarding schools intended to assimilate American Indian children into mainstream American life. Critics have characterized the schools as destroyers of Indian communities and cultures, but the reality that K. Tsianina Lomawaima discloses was much more complex. Lomawaima allows the Chilocco students to speak for themselves. In recollections juxtaposed against the official records of racist ideology and repressive practice, students from the 1920s and 1930s recall their loneliness and demoralization but also remember with pride the love and mutual support binding them together—the forging of new pan-Indian identities and reinforcement of old tribal ones.

American civilization has been shaped by four decisive forces: the frontier, migration, sectionalism and federalism. The frontier has offered abundance to those who would/could take advantage of its opportunities, stimulated technological innovation, and been the source of continuous change in social structure and economic organization; migration has been responsible for relocating cultures from the Old world to the New: various sections of geographic territories have adjusted to the overall American culture without losing their individual distinctiveness; and federalism has shaped the United States'political and social organization., The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics was begun in the late 1950s under the auspices of the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs as a study of the eight'lesser'metropolitan areas in Illinois. What started out as a design for'community maps'of each area, with the intent to outline their particular political systems, led to a major study of metropolitan cities of the prairie-the'heartland'area between the Great Lakes and the Continental Divide-with an examination of the processes that have shaped American politics. The distinctive features of the geographic areas that Elazar discovered can best be understood as reflections of the differences in cultural backgrounds of their respective settlers. Proper understanding of these communities therefore requires an examination of their place in the federal system, the impact of frontier and section upon them, and a study of the cultures that inform them as civil communities. The volume is consequently divided into three parts:'Cities, Frontiers, and Sections,''Streams of Migration and Political Culture,'and'Cities, States, and Nation,'each of which explores Elazar's concerns in discovering the interrelationship between the cities of the frontier and American politics., A prequel to The Closing of the Metropolitan Frontier, The Metropolitan Frontier and American Politics will be of great interest to students of politics, American history and ethnography.

The first statewide history of the Irish in the Prairie State Today over a million people in Illinois claim Irish ancestry and celebrate their love for Ireland. In this concise narrative history, authors Mathieu W. Billings and Sean Farrell bring together both familiar and unheralded stories of the Irish in Illinois, highlighting the critical roles these immigrants and their descendants played in the settlement and the making of the Prairie State. Short biographies and twenty-eight photographs vividly illustrate the significance and diversity of Irish contributions to Illinois. Billings and Farrell remind us of the countless ways Irish men and women have shaped the history and culture of the state. They fought in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and two world wars; built the state's infrastructure and worked in its factories; taught Illinois children and served the poor. Irish political leaders helped to draw up the state's first constitution, served in city, county, and state offices, and created a machine that dominated twentieth-century politics in Chicago and the state. This lively history adds to our understanding of the history of the Irish in the state over the past two hundred fifty years. Illinoisans and Midwesterners celebrating their connections to Ireland will treasure this rich and important account of the state's history.

From Wooden Ploughs to Welfare examines the reserve system imposed by the Canadian government in the 1870s - a system, rooted in theories of racial difference, that stifled initiative, opportunity, and self-esteem. The 1960s saw the collapse of the reserve economy, until then sustained by casual wage work or trapping. The government's answer was a welfare program which marked a new era of deeper dependency. Helen Buckley argues that later government programs have proven equally discouraging: schooling has improved but drop-out rates remain high, economic development remains a low priority, and large sums are spent on manpower courses that seldom lead to jobs. The many who sought a better life by moving to the city received no government assistance at all. Buckley argues that self-government is the only solution to the economic isolation and underdevelopment of native Canadians. She focuses on Status Indians in the Prairie provinces, but her analysis and conclusions are applicable to Status Indians in other regions.

Despite repeated requests for assistance from Plains Indians, the Canadian government provided very little help between 1874 and 1885, and what little they did give proved useless. Although drought, frost, and other natural phenomena contributed to the failure of early efforts, reserve farmers were determined to create an economy based on agriculture and to become independent of government regulations and the need for assistance. Officials in Ottawa, however, attributed setbacks not to economic or climatic conditions but to the Indians'character and traditions which, they claimed, made the Indians unsuited to agriculture. In the decade following 1885 government policies made farming virtually impossible for the Plains Indians. They were expected to subsist on one or two acres and were denied access to any improvements in technology: farmers had to sow seed by hand, harvest with scythes, and thresh with flails. After the turn of the century, the government encouraged land surrenders in order to make good agricultural land available to non-Indian settlers. This destroyed any chance the Plains Indians had of making agriculture a stable economic base. Through an examination of the relevant published literature and of archival sources in Ottawa, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, Carter provides the first in-depth study of government policy, Indian responses, and the socio-economic condition of the reserve communities on the prairies in the post-treaty era.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 The town of Holcomb is located on the high wheat plains of western Kansas. It is a lonesome area that other Kansans call out there. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, and the men wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. #2 Until November 1959, no Americans had ever heard of Holcomb. But when four foreign sounds impinged on the town's normal noises that morning, none of the people there had ever heard them before. #3 Herbert William Clutter was the master of River Valley Farm. He was 48 years old, and he had a strong and healthy appearance. He was not as rich as the richest man in Holcomb, Mr. Taylor Jones, a neighboring rancher, but he was still widely known and respected among Midwestern agriculturists. #4 Mr. Clutter's wife, Bonnie, had been an on-and-off psychiatric patient the last half-dozen years. She had recently been diagnosed with a physical condition that was causing her pain. Clutter was worried about how his family would react to this news.

Excerpt:'Nowhere else in the world has such a determined and successful effort been made to carry the mails by airplane as in the United States. Not since the Armistice have aviators in any part of the globe experienced such thrilling and terrifying adventures as Uncle Sam's aerial postmen. Two years ago I flew as a passenger from New York to Chicago, over the Alleghanies, with “Slim” Lewis and Wesley Smith, two of the Air Mail's best pilots, at the controls. But nothing happened, except that, after some eight hours of rather monotonous flying, we arrived at Chicago after dark, could not locate the Air Mail flying field, and were compelled to land on the prairie west of the city. This was nothing more than an incident; only the pilot who flies day after day, week after week, in all sorts of weather, is fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to experience real adventures. A few weeks ago I journeyed over the entire Air Mail route, from New York to San Francisco. I traveled by train this time, and stopped at every flying field of consequence in search of stories of adventure. And I marveled that these quiet, smooth-faced, unassuming, well-dressed young men, most of whom are married and drive their own cars, could have passed safely through the experiences which I shall relate. Yet there they stood before me.'

A dance was devised in eighteenth-century Skye. An exhilarating dance. A dance, a visitor reports,'the emigration from Skye has occasioned'. The visitor asks for the dance's name.'They call it America,'he's told. In his introduction to this new edition of his classic and pioneering account of what happened to the thousands of people who left Skye and the wider north of Scotland to make new lives across the sea, historian James Hunter reflects on what led him to embark on travels and researches that took him across a continent. To Georgia, North Carolina and Montana; to Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario and the Mohawk Valley; to prairie farms and great cities; to the Rocky Mountains, British Columbia and Washington State. This is the story of the Highland impact on the New World. The story of how soldiers, explorers, guerrilla fighters, fur traders, lumberjacks, railway builders and settlers from Scotland's glens and islands contributed so much to the USA and Canada. It is the story of how a hard-pressed people found in North America a land of opportunity.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 Levon Brooks, a charming and optimistic man, had been working as a night guard at the Santa Barbara Club in Macon, Mississippi. The early'90s were the club's heyday. Old school blues musicians still played at the more established juke joints, but the Santa Barbara lacked authenticity. #2 Brooksville, Mississippi, was a quiet old prairie town with old-fashioned homes softened by an even spread of shade. It was the home of the Santa Barbara, which provided the three men with a variety of marketable skills and a semi-steady income. #3 Justin Johnson, a man with schizophrenia, was able to walk past a sleeping man and enter the house where he found three-year-old Courtney Smith sleeping on the floor. He picked her up and left. It was that easy. #4 By the time William Smith came home between two and two thirty a. m., Courtney was already gone. He saw his brother Tony asleep on the couch, in front of a television now broadcasting static. He glanced into the girls'bedroom and noticed something amiss, but didn't make much of it.

The historic and mythic elements of the American Old West—covered wagon trains, herds of buffalo, teepee villages, Indigenous warriors on horseback, cowboys on open ranges, and white settlers “taming” a wilderness with their plows and log cabins—have exerted a global fascination for more than 200 years and became the foundation for fan communities who have endured for generations. This book examines some of those communities, particularly German fans inspired by the authors of Westerns such as Karl May, and American enthusiasts of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series. But the Old West (like all visions of the past) proved to be shifting cultural terrain. In both Germany and the U. S., Western narratives of white settlement were once seen as “apolitical” and were widely accepted by white people. But during the Nazi period in Germany and in East Germany after 1945, the American West was reevaluated and politically repurposed. Then, during the late twentieth century, understandings of the West changed in the U. S. as well, while the violence of white settler colonialism and the displacement of Indigenous peoples became a flashpoint in the culture wars between right and left. Reagin shows that the past that fans seek to recreate is shaped by the changing present, as each new generation adapts and relives their own West.

Every February, tens of thousands from all over the globe flock to St. Boniface, Manitoba, to attend the largest winter celebration in Western Canada—Festival du Voyageur. For its duration, these visitors can experience the customs and ways of our voyageur ancestors, the hardy men and women who settled the prairies after the arrival of La Vérendrye in 1734. In 1969, the Franco-Manitoban community laid the groundwork for a new winter festival inspired by the historic voyageur era. It also introduced the ambassadors of the endeavour—the Offi cial Voyageurs, based on notable historical fi gures such as Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière and his wife Marie-Anne Gaboury, the fi rst pioneers of the Red River Settlement and the grandparents of Louis Riel. Thanks to its experienced team and thousands of volunteers, Festival du Voyageur has since its inception provided a space in which to gather and celebrate the history of the voyageurs and the fur trade, by way of the First Nations, the Métis, and the early days of the Red River Settlement. Festivalgoers are invited to visit striking snow sculptures, skate on the Red River, enjoy traditional foods, take part in a host of contests and competitions, learn legends and lore from kitchen party and folk music performances, and mingle at the various trading posts. This fond retrospective, spearheaded by Lucienne Beaudry Loiselle and brought to fruition under her careful and dedicated guidance, offers a candid and faithful account of Festival's many successes and challenges over its fifty-year history of warming hearts and cold prairie winters.

A renaissance in Illinois history scholarship has sparked renewed interest in the Prairie State's storied past. Students, meanwhile, continue to pursue coursework in Illinois history to fulfill degree requirements and for their own edification. This Common Threads collection offers important articles from the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Organized as an approachable survey of state history, the book offers chapters that cover the colonial era, early statehood, the Civil War years, the Gilded Age and Progressive eras, World War II, and postwar Illinois. The essays reflect the wide range of experiences lived by Illinoisans engaging in causes like temperance and women's struggle for a shorter workday; facing challenges that range from the rise of street gangs to Decatur's urban decline; and navigating historic issues like the 1822-24 constitutional crisis and the Alton School Case. Contributors: Roger Biles, Lilia Fernandez, Paul Finkelman, Raymond E. Hauser, Reginald Horsman, Suellen Hoy, Judson Jeffries, Lionel Kimble Jr., Thomas E. Pegram, Shirley Portwood, Robert D. Sampson, Ronald E. Shaw, and Robert M. Sutton.

In Sinking Chicago, Harold Platt shows how people responded to climate change in one American city over a hundred-and-fifty-year period. During a long dry spell before 1945, city residents lost sight of the connections between land use, flood control, and water quality. Then, a combination of suburban sprawl and a wet period of extreme weather events created damaging runoff surges that sank Chicago and contaminated drinking supplies with raw sewage. Chicagoans had to learn how to remake a city built on a prairie wetland. They organized a grassroots movement to protect the six river watersheds in the semi-sacred forest preserves from being turned into open sewers, like the Chicago River. The politics of outdoor recreation clashed with the politics of water management. Platt charts a growing constituency of citizens who fought a corrupt political machine to reclaim the region's waterways and Lake Michigan as a single eco-system. Environmentalists contested policymakers'heroic, big-technology approaches with small-scale solutions for a flood-prone environment. Sinking Chicago lays out a roadmap to future planning outcomes.

Through a combination of historical and contemporary analysis this book shows how settler colonialism, as a mode of racial capitalism, has made and remade Winnipeg and the Canadian Prairie West over the past one hundred and fifty years. It traces the emergence of a'dominant bloc', or alliance, in Winnipeg that has imagined and installed successive regional development visions to guarantee its own wealth and power. The book gives particular attention to the ways that an ascendant post-industrial urban redevelopment vision for Winnipeg's city-centre has renewed longstanding colonial'legacies'of dispossession and racism over the past forty years. In doing so, it moves beyond the common tendency to break apart histories of settler-colonial conquest from studies of urban history or contemporary urban processes..

All people, in no matter what culture, must be able to place their music firmly in the context of the totality of their beliefs, experiences, and activities, for without such ties, music cannot exist. This means that there must be a body of theory connected with any music system - not necessarily a theory of the structure of music sound, although that may be present as well, but rather a theory of what music is, what it does, and how it is coordinated with the total environment, both natural and cultural, in which human beings move.The Flathead Indians of Western Montana (just over 26,000 in number as of the 2000 census) inhabit a reservation consisting of 632,516 acres of land in the Jocko and Flathead Valleys and the Camas Prairie country, which lie roughly between Evaro and Kalispell, Montana. The reservation is bounded on the east by the Mission Range, on the west by the Cabinet National Forest, on the south by the Lolo National Forest, and on the north by an arbitrary line, approximately bisecting Flathead Lake about twenty-four miles south of Kalispell. The area is one of the richest agricultural regions in Montana, and fish and game are abundant. The Flathead are engaged in stocking, timbering, and various agricultural enterprises.For the Flathead, the most important single fact about music and its relationship to the total world is its origin in the supernatural sphere. All true and proper songs, particularly in the past, owe their origin to a variety of contacts experienced by humans with beings which, though a part of this world, are superhuman and the source of both individual and tribal powers and skills. Thus a sharp distinction is drawn by the Flathead between what they call'make-up'and all other songs. Merriam's pioneering work in the relationship of ethnography and musicology remains a primary source in this field in anthropology.

Je n'avais pas plus de quinze ans, lorsqu'un jour mon père me rapporta de Paris quelques volumes de Fenimore Cooper, le grand romancier américain. Il y a longtemps de cela, hélas! Mais je me rappelle encore mon enthousiasme d'enfant pour cette vie des prairies que j'entrevoyais dans ses récits. La vaste prairie avec ses troupeaux de buffles ou d'antilopes, les grands lacs, les bois sans fin, la montagne mystérieuse, tout cela me charmait. Fruit d'une sélection réalisée au sein des fonds de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection XIX a pour ambition de faire découvrir des textes classiques et moins classiques dans les meilleures éditions du XIXe siècle.

A photographic diary of a small Midwestern farm and the family who've made it their home In Roshara Journal, father-and-son team Jerry and Steve Apps share the monthly happenings at their family's farm in central Wisconsin. Featuring Steve's stunning photos and fifty years of Jerry's journal entries, Roshara Journal captures the changes—both from month to month and over the decades—on the landscape and farmstead. The Apps family has owned Roshara since 1966. There they nurture a prairie restoration and pine plantation, maintain a large garden that feeds three generations, observe wildlife species by the dozens, and support a population of endangered butterflies. In documenting life on this piece of land, Jerry and Steve remind us how, despite the pace and challenges of modern life, the seasons continue to influence our lives in ways large and small. Jerry explains that his journal entries become much more than mere observations:'It seems that when I write about something—a bur oak tree, for example—that old tree becomes a part of me.... Writing takes me to a place that goes beyond observation and understanding, a place filled with feeling and meaning.'In the tradition of Bernd Heinrich in Maine, Barry Lopez in the Canadian Arctic, and Aldo Leopold just an hour down the road in Baraboo, Jerry and Steve Apps combine observation, experience, and reflection to tell a profound story about one place in the world.

A Laversine comme à Chantilly, la Jacquerie dut exercer ses ravages, car nous n'avons pas de documents antérieurs à 1360 ; le premier qui nous donne des renseignements précis est l'aveu et dénombrement rendu au roi, à cause de sa châtellenie de Creil, par Aubry de Laversine le 23 octobre 1376. Le contenu de ce document montre de façon évidente que la seigneurie avait subi des morcellements par suite de partages de successions ; le domaine qui reste attaché au château est fort mince, et se compose de petites pièces disséminées : « Le manoir de Laversine ainsi comme il se comporte ; quatre arpens séant à la pierre de Jorain devant Caneville trois arpens de pré séant sous Thiverny ; deux arpens que vigne que jardin séant au clos devant la porte de Laversine ; outre l'eau, neuf arpens et demi et treize perches de terre ; un arpent de terre aux Hayes ; trois arpens séant au lieu qu'on dit du Porcheret ; arpent et demi de terre à la voie de Vineuil ; treize arpens trois quartiers de terre séant au Conrroy, joignant à la rivière d'Oise ; cinq arpens séant au Pomereul ; trois arpens de pré en la prairie de Trossy ; demi-arpent en ce même lieu ; un arpent et demi que vigne que terre séant au lieu dit le Vivier ; une petite pièce d'aunoye entre Trossy et Laversine ; demi-arpent de terre aux Hayes derrière la maison qui fut Aubert de Laversine ; deux arpens de terre séant aux Montoelles, de nul prix ; un arpent séant derrière le Mugelain, de nul prix ; sur la Goullée, cinq quartiers de terre, de nul prix ; le bois de Buissonval et le bois de la Mainferme, contenant sept arpens de bois plein ; les menus cens de la Saint-Remy, qui souloient valoir environ 9 livres, qui ne me valent à présent plus de 4 livres ; les rentes de la Toussaint, reçues le jour de la feste aux Morts, qui ne valent à présent plus de 17 mines d'avoine ; 6 sols de rente que doit Colin le Chevalier ; à Noël, deux chapons et deux poules ou environ ; la justice de Trossy, de Saint-Maximin et de Laversine, c'est assavoir le rouage, le forage, le plaid, les corvées, toute justice haute, moyenne et basse ; toutes les voiries de ladite ville ; la haute justice des hôtes de Royaumont, de Saint-Évremond et des Raddez ». Fruit d'une sélection réalisée au sein des fonds de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection XIX a pour ambition de faire découvrir des textes classiques et moins classiques dans les meilleures éditions du XIXe siècle.

En sortant d'Auray, et se dirigeant sur la route d'Hennebond, on trouve un chemin qui conduit à l'ancienne Chartreuse ; on en suit les murs et on arrive, en descendant un coteau assez rapide, à une prairie bordée d'un côté par un vaste marais, de l'autre par de hauts châtaigniers ; c'est là que furent fusillés un grand nombre des émigrés débarqués à Quiberon. Un voyageur suivait cette route et passait près de ce lien que le souvenir ensanglante encore ; il fut arrêté dans sa marche par une grande foule de paysans qui couvraient le chemin ; son imagination venait de lui retracer les scènes de désolation qui s'étaient passées dans le pays qu'il traversait, et son âme était remplie d'une tristesse profonde. Fruit d'une sélection réalisée au sein des fonds de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection XIX a pour ambition de faire découvrir des textes classiques et moins classiques dans les meilleures éditions du XIXe siècle.

Bas-Canada1838. La famille de Pierre Gagnon, à l'exemple de milliers d'autres, prend le chemin de l'exil. Les jumeaux, Jeanne et Paul, croyaient y trouver la tranquillité, mais leur frère Georges les propulse dans l'action et l'aventure. Ils côtoient les héros de l'époque, dont Chevalier de Lorimier, Robert Nelson, Julien Gagnon, Narcisse Cardinal, Joseph Robert, tous membres de la société secrète des Frères Chasseurs créée dans le but de recruter les combattants. L'auteur entraîne le lecteur dans une saisissante saga historique aux rebondissements inattendus dans plusieurs localités, dont Québec, Montréal, Beauharnois, Châteauguay, Sainte Martine, La Prairie, Beloeil, Napierreville, Lacolle et Saint-Jean. Après les chemins de la liberté (Premier prix du Mérite patrimonial Fleur Bleue 2010), tout est en place pour assister à une autre page d'histoires passionnante, vécue au temps des patriotes par des gens épris de justice et de liberté.

Rising above the countryside of Wood County, Wisconsin, Powers Bluff is a large outcrop of quartzite rock that resisted the glaciers that flattened the surrounding countryside. It is an appropriate symbol for the Native people who once lived on its slopes, quietly resisting social forces that would have crushed and eroded their culture. A large band of Potawatomi, many returnees from the Kansas Prairie Band Potawatomi reservation, established the village of Tah-qua-kik or Skunk Hill in 1905 on the 300-foot-high bluff, up against the oddly shaped rocks that topped the hill and protected the community from the cold winter winds. In Skunk Hill, archeologist Robert A. Birmingham traces the largely unknown story of this community, detailing the role it played in preserving Native culture through a harsh period of US Indian policy from the 1880s to 1930s. The story's central focus is the Drum Dance, also known as the Dream Dance or Big Drum, a pan-tribal cultural revitalization movement that swept the Upper Midwest during the Great Suppression, emphasizing Native values and rejecting the vices of the white world. Though the community disbanded by the 1930s, the site, now on the National Register of Historic Places with two dance circles still visible on the grounds, stands as testimony to the efforts of its members to resist cultural assimilation.

C'était un soir d'avril 1876. — Le soleil, toute la journée, n'avait cessé de lutter contre les nuages. Enfin après des alternatives de succès et de défaites, tantôt voilé et tantôt radieux, il venait de disparaître à l'extrême horizon. — Le vent soufflait du nord, ses rafales glacées promenaient dans les airs les herbes mortes arrachées à la prairie indienne, et produisaient dans les branches des arbres encore privées de feuillage, un sifflement étrange qui troublait seul le silence et la solitude du désert. Fruit d'une sélection réalisée au sein des fonds de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection XIX a pour ambition de faire découvrir des textes classiques et moins classiques dans les meilleures éditions du XIXe siècle.

Laissez la magie de Noël entrer dans votre vie…À 19 ans, Wilhelm ne connaît pas son père. On lui a juré cent fois qu'il était mort ; il ne l'a jamais cru. Et si, après d'innombrables recherches, ce 24 décembre 1962, les efforts et les espoirs de ce jeune homme étaient enfin récompensés? Parti pour réveillonner chez sa fiancée, Maurice laisse chez lui une bouteille de champagne dans le frigo. Il s'agit d'un oubli. Qui va sauver un être cher! Anna-Maria, 76 ans, a décidé que, pour Noël, elle aurait une cuisine neuve. Et ne recule devant rien, pas même une prise d'otages... Donna, 55 ans, est ensevelie dans une tempête de neige. Quatre jours plus tard, on la retrouve indemne grâce à un chien... Incroyables, émouvantes ou drôles, voici « Les plus belles histoires vraies de Noël » glanées aux quatre coins du monde!EXTRAIT :Lorsque ce vendredi 19 décembre 2008, Donna Molnar quitte son domicile de la ville d'Ancaster (Ontario), elle ignore que, dans peu de temps, on parlera d'elle aux quatre coins du monde. Âgée de cinquante-cinq ans, Donna, épouse et mère de famille, vêtue d'une veste d'hiver, portant bottes et mitaines, monte dans son solide pick-up de couleur blanche. Et démarre. But de la sortie : effectuer quelques banales emplettes. Pourtant habituée aux dures conditions climatiques de sa région du Canada, Donna ne craint évidemment pas la neige. Cependant, la tempête qui, brutalement, se déclenche au-dessus d'Ancaster la prend de court. Rapidement, la route devient impraticable et le véhicule de Donna s'immobilise. Alors, sans doute la conductrice pense-t-elle avoir davantage de chance à pied et s'éloigne de la voiture. Les heures s'égrènent. David, le mari, s'inquiète d'une absence aussi longue et alerte les secours. Des battues sont immédiatement organisées. On trouve le pick-up vide, mais aucune trace de Donna. Le soir venu, les recherches sont interrompues. L'angoisse puis le désespoir gagnent petit à petit David Molnar et son fils de vingt ans. Autour d'eux, on veut encore garder espoir. Pourtant, le temps passe. Douloureusement. Jusqu'au jour où un secouriste volontaire, Ray Lau, parcourt un champ en compagnie de son chien, Ace. Subitement, l'animal s'arrête et aboie. Sous ses pattes – et soixante centimètres de neige! – gît Donna Molnar. Bloquée dans cette prairie durant quatre jours et trois nuits par une température moyenne de moins quinze degrés – seuls sa tête et son cou ont échappé à l'ensevelissement –, elle vit encore! Consciente, Donna a été plongée dans un coma artificiel dès son arrivée à l'hôpital. C'est là que ses proches l'ont veillée durant toute la période de Noël, surveillant son état qui, lente¬ment, s'améliore. Interrogé par la presse, David Molnar parlera d'une « intervention divine ». Et, aussi, canine...

Illinois State Historical Society Superior Achievement Award 2015 The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois, houses a trove of invaluable historical resources concerning all aspects of the Prairie State's past. Treasures of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library commemorates the institution's 125-year history, as well as its contributions to scholarship and education by highlighting a selection of eighty-five treasures from among more than twelve million items in the library's collections. After opening with a historical overview and extensive chronology of the Library, the volume organizes the treasures by various topics, including items that illustrate various locations and materials relating to business, the mid-nineteenth century and the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the oldest items, unusual treasures, ethnicity, and art. From the Gettysburg Address, Abraham and Mary Lincoln's letters, and Governor Dan Walker's boots to a Deering Harvester Company catalog, WPA publications, and an Adlai Stevenson I campaign hat, each entry includes a thorough description of the item, one or more images, and a discussion of its history and how the library acquired it, if known. Other treasures include the Thomas Yates General Store daybook, Dubin Pullman car materials, Civil War newspapers, a Lincoln coffin photograph, the Mary Lincoln insanity verdict, the Directory of Sangamon County's Colored Citizens, andLincoln's stovepipe hat. To highlight the academic importance of the Library, nineteen researchers share how study in the Library's collections proved essential to their projects. Although these treasures only scrape the surface of the vast holdings of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, together they epitomize the rich, varied, and sometimes quirky resources available to both serious scholars and curious tourists alike at this valuable cultural institution.

In the spring of 1881, W. M. D. Lee and Lucien B. Scott, wealthy businessmen of Leavenworth, Kansas, purchased land in the upper Texas Panhandle to establish the Lee-Scott Cattle Company. Their range sprawled across four Texas counties and extended into eastern New Mexico. About six months later, fifty thousand head of mixed cattle, branded LS, grazed those thousands of acres of free grass. This book is the story of Lee and Scott's LS Ranch from the tempestuous years of the open range to the era of “bob wire.” It is also the story of the pioneer men and women whose efforts developed the LS into a cattle empire: W. M. D. and Lena Lee, Lucien and Julia Scott, “Mister Mac” and “Miss Annie” McAllister, and Charles and Pauline Whitman. Here are accounts of chuck wagons and wagon bosses; prairie fires, blizzards, and bog holes; ranch management problems and cowboys on strike; lobo wolves and romance; wild sprees in Tascosa and its “Hogtown” sector; LS cowboys fighting against a gang of organized rustlers in a feud that ended in tragedy; and those same cowboys on the long trails to Dodge City and Montana. Drawing upon stories told to her by men and women who were with the LS during the 1880's and later years, Dulcie Sullivan presents her narrative in a clear, straightforward, but sympathetic manner that gives the reader a vivid sense of how life was really lived there in those times. Especially telling is her occasional use of an almost poetic incident: the steers bedding down around a campfire to listen to the chuck-wagon cook play his fiddle, or the suit of Spanish armor found in a spring, or the hail-battered trees attempting to renew themselves, despite their grotesque shapes.

In 1977, while studying journalism at the University of Iowa, Chris Baker gave his grandmother a notebook and asked her to write about her childhood. Years later, long after her death in 1990, he found the tattered yellow notebook. In twenty-nine handwritten pages, the woman he knew as Grandma Covert had recorded her younger life in rural Iowa between 1920 and 1929. Writing about herself from the ages of four to thirteen, Vetra Covert sent a simple message back to her grandson: “That's just the way it was. Others had it worse. We got by.” Captivated by this glimpse of a woman very different from the more formidable grandmother of his memory, Chris Baker reframed Vetra's journal to create a narrative of her childhood and a window into rural Iowa life in the 1920s. Transcribing her words into nine chapters that illuminate home, family, neighbors, school, and social life, he has composed a collection of candid, whimsical, sometimes ornery stories that will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to decipher the lives found in old letters and photos. Vetra's was not a romantic little-house-on-the-prairie childhood. She grew up with seven brothers and sisters (every new baby was “a supprise”) in a dilapidated log cabin near a small town now vanished from the Iowa map. Two rooms up, two rooms down, no plumbing, no electricity, holes in the roof and floor so big “you could of throwed a cat through them.” Her father was a bootlegger-farmer who measured his corn yield in gallons, not bushels, a moonshiner occasionally harassed by federal agents. Although family stories now present him as a quaint old-timer, the reality of living with him was much starker. In his introduction to Vetra's recollections, Chris Baker reveals the harsh truths underlying her authentic, uncomplaining account. By honoring her legacy, he discovered a newfound respect for her and for her family's ability to survive despite the devastating forces of poverty, isolation, and the looming Great Depression. Together he and his grandmother have created an enduring chapter in family history.

This second volume in the History of Wisconsin series introduces us to the first generation of statehood, from the conversion of prairie and forests into farmland to the development of cities and industry. In addition, this volume presents a synthesis of the Civil War and Reconstruction era in Wisconsin. Scarcely a decade after entering the Union, the state was plunged into the nationwide debate over slavery, the secession crisis, and a war in which 11,000'Badger Boys in Blue'gave their lives. Wisconsin's role in the Civil War is chronicled, along with the post-war years. Complete with photographs from the Historical Society's collections, as well as many pertinent maps, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in this era of Wisconsin's history.

Russell P. Strange'Book of the Year'Award from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2012. On the eve of the War of 1812, the Illinois Territory was a new land of bright promise. Split off from Indiana Territory in 1809, the new territory ran from the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers north to the U.S. border with Canada, embracing the current states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Michigan. The extreme southern part of the region was rich in timber, but the dominant feature of the landscape was the vast tall grass prairie that stretched without major interruption from Lake Michigan for more than three hundred miles to the south. The territory was largely inhabited by Indians: Sauk, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and others. By 1812, however, pioneer farmers had gathered in the wooded fringes around prime agricultural land, looking out over the prairies with longing and trepidation. Six years later, a populous Illinois was confident enough to seek and receive admission as a state in the Union. What had intervened was the War of 1812, in which white settlers faced both Indians resistant to their encroachments and British forces poised to seize control of the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes. The war ultimately broke the power and morale of the Indian tribes and deprived them of the support of their ally, Great Britain. Sometimes led by skillful tacticians, at other times by blundering looters who got lost in the tall grass, the combatants showed each other little mercy. Until and even after the war was concluded by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, there were massacres by both sides, laying the groundwork for later betrayal of friendly and hostile tribes alike and for ultimate expulsion of the Indians from the new state of Illinois. In this engrossing new history, published upon the war's bicentennial, Gillum Ferguson underlines the crucial importance of the War of 1812 in the development of Illinois as a state. The history of Illinois in the War of 1812 has never before been told with so much attention to the personalities who fought it, the events that defined it, and its lasting consequences. Endorsed by the Illinois Society of the War of 1812 and the Illinois War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission.

Drawing on research from a variety of academic fields, such as archaeology, history, botany, ecology, and physical science, M. J. Morgan explores the intersection of people and the environment in early eighteenth-century Illinois Country—a stretch of fecund, alluvial river plain along the Mississippi river. Arguing against the traditional narrative that describes Illinois as an untouched wilderness until the influx of American settlers, Morgan illustrates how the story began much earlier. She focuses her study on early French and Indian communities, and later on the British, nestled within the tripartite environment of floodplain, riverine cliffs and bluffs, and open, upland till plain/prairie and examines the impact of these diverse groups of people on the ecological landscape. By placing human lives within the natural setting of the period—the abundant streams and creeks, the prairies, plants and wildlife—she traces the environmental change that unfolded across almost a century. She describes how it was a land in motion; how the occupying peoples used, extracted, and extirpated its resources while simultaneously introducing new species; and how the flux and flow of life mirrored the movement of the rivers. Morgan emphasizes the importance of population sequences, the relationship between the aboriginals and the Europeans, the shared use of resources, and the effects of each on the habitat. Land of Big Rivers is a unique, many-themed account of the big-picture ecological change that occurred during the early history of the Illinois Country. It is the first book to consider the environmental aspects of the Illinois Indian experience and to reconsider the role of the French and British in environmental change in the mid-Mississippi Valley. It engagingly recreates presettlement Illinois with a remarkable interdisciplinary approach and provides new details that will encourage understanding of the interaction between physical geography and the plants, animals, and people in the Illinois Country. Furthermore, it exhibits the importance of looking at the past in the context of environmental transformation, which is especially relevant in light of today's global climate change.

One of our most eminent Lincoln scholars, winner of a Lincoln Prize for his Lincoln at Cooper Union, examines the four months between Lincoln's election and inauguration, when the president-elect made the most important decision of his coming presidency—there would be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding states, even at the cost of civil war.Abraham Lincoln first demonstrated his determination and leadership in the Great Secession Winter—the four months between his election in November 1860 and his inauguration in March 1861—when he rejected compromises urged on him by Republicans and Democrats, Northerners and Southerners, that might have preserved the Union a little longer but would have enshrined slavery for generations. Though Lincoln has been criticized by many historians for failing to appreciate the severity of the secession crisis that greeted his victory, Harold Holzer shows that the presidentelect waged a shrewd and complex campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery while vainly trying to limit secession to a few Deep South states. During this most dangerous White House transition in American history, the country had two presidents: one powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted public statements, determined private letters, tough political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln guaranteed the integrity of the American political process of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and transformed not only his own image but that of the presidency, even while making inevitable the war that would be necessary to make these achievements permanent. Lincoln President-Elect is the first book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private agony during these months and on the momentous consequences when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership. Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment when allegiance to the founding credo'all men are created equal'might well have been sacrificed.

One of the Midwest's best-loved authors tells the story of his land, from the last great glacier that dug out its valleys and formed its hills, to his own family's 40 year relationship with the beloved farm they call Roshara. In this quiet but epic tale, Apps describes the Native Americans who lived on the land for hundreds of years, tapping the maple trees and fishing the streams and lakes, as well as the first white settlers who tilled its sandy acres, plowing the native grasses that grew taller than their teams of oxen. For all their work, the farm proved tough to tame. Hardscrabble farming methods and hard luck often brought failure.'From land that provided only a marginal living for its early owners, this place we call Roshara has provided much for my family and me,'writes Apps. He and his wife and their children have cared for the farm not so much to make a living as to enhance their lives. Apps chronicles the family's efforts — always earnest, if sometimes ill-advised — to restore an old granary into living space, develop a productive vegetable garden, manage the woodlots, reestablish a prairie, and enjoy nature's sounds and silences. Breathtakingly beautiful color photographs by Apps's son, Steve (a professional photographer), highlight the ever-changing beauty of the land in every season and hint at the spiritual gifts that are the true bounty this family reaps from Roshara. Central to Apps'work is his belief that the land is something to cherish and revere. Like Aldo Leopold before him, Apps sounds an inspirational call to readers to preserve wild and rural places, leaving them in better condition than we found them for future generations.