1. In 1883, 9-year-old Willa Cather moved to bleak Nebraska. She came from the site of George Washington's headquarters during the Seven Year War, and Stonewall Jackson's in the Civil War: Winchester, Virginia. Other members of her family had already gone to Nebraska, and suffered the shock that settlers felt when they left the forests behind, and entered the wide, empty Great Plains.
You can feel it in "Little House on the Prairie," by Laura Ingalls Wilder, too.
2. "One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight,.... On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy, crying bitterly."
O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather; Part I: The Wild Land Chapter I Page 1
3. "The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings. In eleven long years John Bergson had made but little impression upon the wild land he had come to tame. It was still a wild thing that had its ugly moods; and no one knew when they were likely to come, or why." "O Pioneers! "by Willa Cather
a. "Blizzards killed cattle, horses broke legs in prairie-dog holes, hogs died of cholera, crops withered."
" Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828," by Walter A. McDougall, p. 11.
These are the Americans.
They were willing to bear the hardships, danger, the whims of weather......
They displayed the kind of spirit one associates with "Americans" who tamed a continent and gave birth to the greatest nation that history had ever seen.
They deserved a commensurate government.
What sort of homage did the government pay to the progeny of those settlers?
You can feel it in "Little House on the Prairie," by Laura Ingalls Wilder, too.
2. "One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight,.... On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy, crying bitterly."
O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather; Part I: The Wild Land Chapter I Page 1
3. "The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings. In eleven long years John Bergson had made but little impression upon the wild land he had come to tame. It was still a wild thing that had its ugly moods; and no one knew when they were likely to come, or why." "O Pioneers! "by Willa Cather
a. "Blizzards killed cattle, horses broke legs in prairie-dog holes, hogs died of cholera, crops withered."
" Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828," by Walter A. McDougall, p. 11.
These are the Americans.
They were willing to bear the hardships, danger, the whims of weather......
They displayed the kind of spirit one associates with "Americans" who tamed a continent and gave birth to the greatest nation that history had ever seen.
They deserved a commensurate government.
What sort of homage did the government pay to the progeny of those settlers?
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