The Driftless Reader

Curt Meine is a conservation biologist and writer affiliated with the Aldo Leopold Foundation, Center for Humans and Nature, International Crane Foundation, and University of Wisconsin–Madison. His many books include Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work and Wallace Stegner and the Continental Vision. Keefe Keeley, a native of the Kickapoo Valley, is executive director of the Savanna Institute, working with farmers on sustainable agro-ecosystems in the Upper Midwest.

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