Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie / Edition 1

by John Mack Faragher

Overview

"This is a book for anyone who has ridden down a country road and, hearing the wind whistle through the cornstalks, wondered about the Indians and pioneers who listened to that sound before him."—Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune

Winner of the 1986 Society for the History of the Early American Republic Award

The fascinating story of the birth and development of a rural American community from its origins at the turn of the nineteenth century to the years that followed the Civil War. Drawing on newspapers, account books, and reminiscences, the author of the prize-winning Women and Men on the Overland Trail vividly portrays the lives of the prairie’s inhabitants—Indians, pioneers, farming men and women—and adds a compelling new chapter to American social history.

"Every chapter, almost every page, contains new ideas or throws new light on old ones, by means of a wealth of detail and clarity of though which brings the past alive again."—Hugh Brogan, The Times Literary Supplement

"Here, succinctly set out, is the American prairie experience."—Publishers Weekly

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300042634
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/11/1988
Series:	The Lamar Series in Western History
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	285
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Mack Faragheris associate professor of history at Mount Holyoke College.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations and Maps	ix
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction	xiii
Part 1	Howling Wilderness
1	The Pioneer of Sugar Creek	3
2	Hunters and Sugar-Makers	10
3	Defenders of the Manitou	18
4	A War of Extirpation	25
Part 2	The Country of Plenty To Eat
5	Land-Looker	39
6	American Tartars	44
7	Customs of Association	53
8	With Milk and Honey Flow	61
Part 3	Lords of the Soil, Tenants of the Hearth
9	Totally and Forever Dissolved	79
10	In Sickness and in Health	87
11	Raising Hogs and Children	96
12	She Drained Herself to Give Them Life	110
Part 4	The Sugar Creek Community
13	A Scene to Rouse Their Passions	121
14	Good Neighborship	130
15	Open-Country Connexions	143
16	The Community of Feeling	156
Part 5	All Is Changed
17	It Answers Well for a Village	173
18	Landlords and Tenants	181
19	Conservative Change	199
20	The Remnant of That Pioneer Band	216
	Conclusion	234
	Notes	239
	Index	271