Ancient glaciers passed by the Driftless Area and waterways vein its interior, forming an enchanting, enigmatic landscape of sharp ridgetops and deep valleys. Across time, this rugged topography has been home to an astonishing variety of people: Sauk, Dakota, and Ho-Chunk villagers, Norwegian farmers and Mexican mercado owners, Dominican nuns and Buddhist monks, river raftsmen and Shakespearean actors, Cornish miners and African American barn builders, organic entrepreneurs and Hmong truck gardeners. The Driftless Reader gathers writings that highlight the unique natural and cultural history, landscape, and literature of this region that encompasses southwestern Wisconsin and adjacent Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. The more than eighty selected texts include writings by Black Hawk, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frank Lloyd Wright, Aldo Leopold, David Rhodes, and many other Native people, explorers, scientists, historians, farmers, songwriters, journalists, and poets. Paintings, photographs, maps, and other images complement the texts, providing a deeper appreciation of this region's layered natural and human history. Highlights include excerpts and art from: Carol Ryrie Brink, William Cronon, John T. Curtis, August Derleth, Richard Eberhart, Fabu, Hamlin Garland, Pedro Guerrero, Hoowaneka (Little Elk), Juliet Kinzie, Patty Loew, Ben Logan, Truman Lowe, Jacques Marquette, Ken McCullough, Edna Meudt, Mountain Wolf Woman, Zebulon Pike, Henry Schoolcraft, Clifford D. Simak, Wallace Stegner, Pearl Swiggum, Frank Utpatel, Mark Wunderlich.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Credits Preface Acknowledgments Editors’ Note   1 Geologic Origins Getting to Black Earth (2013), Patricia Monaghan From Roadside Geology of Wisconsin (2004), Robert H. Dott Jr. and John W. Attig From Wisconsin’s Foundations (2004), Gwen M. Schultz From “Preliminary Paper on the Driftless Area of the Upper Mississippi Valley” (1885), T. C. Chamberlin and Rollin D. Salisbury From “The Pleistocene History of Northeastern Iowa” (1891), W J McGee Watch for Fallen Rock (2012), Katherine Mead   2 Ancient Peoples Wisconsin Mounds (1963), Edna Meudt From Twelve Millennia: Archaeology of the Upper Mississippi River Valley (2003), James L. Theler and Robert F. Boszhart From Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal (2001), Patty Loew From “Notes Respecting Certain Indian Mounds and Earthworks, in the Form of Animal Effigies, Chiefly in the Wisconsin Territory, U.S.” (1838), Richard C. Taylor From Buried Indians: Digging Up the Past in a Midwestern Town (2006), Laurie Hovell McMillin From Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People (2009), David S. Faldet Wisconsin’s Cave of Wonders (2003), E. Barrie Kavasch   3 Historical Ecologies Meditations (1931), Laura Sherry From “Notes on the Journey West” (1861), Henry David Thoreau From Caddie Woodlawn (1936), Carol Ryrie Brink From “An Ecological Survey of the Driftless Area of Illinois and Wisconsin” (1909), H. S. Pepoon From The Vegetation of Wisconsin (1959), John T. Curtis From “Reconstructing Vegetation Past: Pre-Euro-American Vegetation for the Midwest Driftless Area, USA” (2014), Monika E. Shea, Lisa A. Schulte, and Brian J. Palik Changes in Wildlife Over Time (2012), Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Desoto Hills (1951), Cecile Houghton Stury   4 Native Voices Native Names on the Land The Story of Devil’s Lake (1930), Ulysses S. White Statement to U.S. Indian Commissioners at Prairie du Chien (1829), Hoowaneka/Huwanika (Little Elk) From Life of Black Hawk or Mà-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kià-Kiàk (1833), Black Hawk From A Canoe Voyage Up the Minnay Sotor (1847), George William Featherstonhaugh From “Narrative of Spoon Decorah” (1887), Spoon Decorah From Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder (1961), Xehaciwi?ga (Mountain Wolf Woman)   5 Explorations La Crosse at Ninety Miles an Hour (1953), Richard Eberhart From Le Premier Voÿage qu’a Fait Le P. Marquette . . . [Of the First Voyage Made by Father Marquette . . . ] (1674), Jacques Marquette From The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike to Headwaters of the Mississippi River (1810), Zebulon Montgomery Pike From Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States (1821), Henry R. Schoolcraft Recess in the Bluffs near MacGregor (1863), John Muir From “Landscape and Home: Environmental Traditions in Wisconsin” (1990), William Cronon From Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003), Robin Wall Kimmerer Old Man Fishing (1960), August Derleth   6 Early Economies Diggings (2011), Alice D’Alessio Life in the Diggings (1898), Henry E. Legler Public Land Sale (1847), James M. Goodhue From “Recollections of Antoine Grignon” (1914), Antoine Grignon From A Raft Pilot’s Log (1930), Walter A. Blair From History of the White Pine Industry in Minnesota (1949), Agnes M. Larson From Order Upon the Land (1976), Hildegard Binder Johnson Dreamers (1931), Laura Case Sherry   7 Settler Stories Sesquicentennial Song, for Wisconsin Statehood, 1848 (2008), Thomas R. Smith From Wau-Bun: The Early Day in the Northwest (1873), Juliette Kinzie Macaja Revels Camped at a Stream of Water (2013), Fabu From A Badger Boy in Blue (1862), Chauncey Cooke From The Kickapoo Valley: The Gem of Wisconsin (1896), Gertrude Frazier and Rose B. Poff “Every Time I Travel the Great River Road . . .” (1990), Pearl Swiggum Yanys (2010), Jacqueline West   8 Farming Lives Me and My Man (1931), Laura Sherry From Incidents of a Journey from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin Territory (1837), William Rudolph Smith From A Son of the Middle Border (1917), Hamlin Garland From Little House in the Big Woods (1932), Laura Ingalls Wilder From The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People (1975), Ben Logan It Is Natural (2006), Lynne Burgess   9 Waterways The Pinery Boy (1926), Collected by Franz Rickaby From Life on the Mississippi (1883), Mark Twain From American Places (1981), Wallace Stegner Water Song (2013), Catherine Young From Crossing the Driftless: A Canoe Trip through a Midwestern Landscape (2015), Lynne Diebel War (1956), Joseph Langland   10 Conserving Lands From Wisconsin Sketches (1973), Robert E. Gard Coon Valley: An Adventure in Cooperative Conservation (1935), Aldo Leopold From Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography (1943), Frank Lloyd Wright Letter from the Old Order Amish Churches (1995) An Ecological Play on a Stage Known as Dunlap Hollow (1998), Stanley Temple From A Thousand Pieces of Paradise: Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo Valley (2005), Lynne Heasley Frac Sand Song (2013), Emmett J. Doyle   11 Communities in Transition Driftless Elegy (2013), Mark Wunderlich “Richland Center, the Cradle of Su¤rage in Wisconsin: How Earliest Enthusiasts Led Sisters” (1924), Mary Elizabeth Hussong From The Driftless Zone; or, A Novel Concerning the Selective Outmigration from Small Cities (1997), Rick Harsch From Driftless (2008), David Rhodes Postville: Iowa’s Entry into the Post-Modern (2009), Robert Wolf Things I Love About Where I Am (2012), Kathe Davis 287   12 Futures Broken Gates (2012), Ken McCullough From Way Station (1963), Clifford D. Simak From Going Driftless: Life Lessons from the Heartland for Unraveling Times (2015), Stephen Lyons From Jerusalem Creek: Journeys into Driftless Country (2002), Ted Leeson From The Driftless Land: Spirit of Place in the Upper Mississippi Valley (2010), Kevin Koch   Sources and Further Readings Index