"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