black pioneers in search of land, freedom, and educa-
tion worked with their Euro-American neighbors to
establish communities. The Afro-American commu-
nities of Cheyenne Valley, located in the Town of
Forest in Vernon County, and Pleasant Ridge, locat-
ed in the Town of Beetown, Grant County, were the
largest early settlements of black farmers in single
towns in the state.

             BREAKING PRAIRIE
     They spread slowly across the Wisconsin land,
on foot, in wagons, on horseback, or, later, on rail-
road trains.
     Early settlers remarked on the beauty of the
prairies: "We struck the prairie which was to me a
beautiful sight. We could see a grass plot for four
or five miles, not a tree or bush on it. Then again as
we passed on we could see the orchards, the wild
fruits. The grass was up to our horses' mouths, and
they would nip it as we rode." In some places the
prairies appeared to be like cultivated fields. Trav-
elers frequently looked for a human dwelling, not
realizing that there was none for fifteen or twenty
miles.
     Settlers found that the prairie produced remark-
able plants. The following description appeared in
a written history of Iowa County:
    An early traveler, speaking of the verdure of the Wiscon-
sin prairies, describes the flowering plants that decorated the
surface: "The flowers of the prairies are various and beauti-
ful. The blue, yellow, white and purple chrysanthemum are
common; a yellow flower, waving and drooping like an ostrich
feather, is also generally found. Some varieties resembling
the prince's feather are common; delicate snow-drops, violets
and diamond sparks that 'love the ground,' form the carpet,
whence springs the plumed stem of many colors, intermingled
with the 'masonic' or mineral plant, and the compass or resin
plant, or the prairie sunflower. The mineral plant bears a
bluish-purple flower, and is remarkable for the qualities at-
tributed to its growth by the miners. It is said to indicate
the presence of mineral. It sometimes spreads in spots over
a large surface of ground, obscuring all but the grass beneath
it; here the miners will dig with almost a certainty of strik-
ing on a lead mine. Sometimes the range of a flower's growth
is in the shape of a straight or curved or an irregular line,
indicating the range of the crevice mineral in the strata be-
neath; these indications are believed in, and relied upon by
many of the miners. If this be true, and the plant actually
points out the location of the mineral (galena), then, as I
have observed, no one can say where mineral cannot be found,
for this flowering plant is the most common in the country,
and yet, as its growth on different parts of the prairie is so
irregular in quantity and in direction, there may be something
in the peculiarity of soil covering mineral which produces this
plant; it is called by the miners 'masonic,' perhaps, in de-
rision, for it discloses the secret of the mine.
    "The rosin or turpentine weed, or compass plant, de-
serves some notice. I have called it the prairie sunflower,
from the mere resemblance to the flower, so called, with us,


Many bachelors came to farm in Wisconsin. Sometimes
was a woman, often not. It was sourdough and beans.


     Much of Kenosha and Racine counties wei
prairie lands; Walworth had Elkhorn Prairie; Roc
Prairie in Rock County was one of the largest ar
most beautiful of Wisconsin prairie lands, and I
Rock also were other smaller prairies; west of Gree
County was the "big prairie" which began near ti,
Mississippi, followed the "military ridge" eastwal
toward Madison, and extended in central parts ini


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