The root networks in it were so dense, that it would make something like brick, and then you could pile them together and build a thick and heavy sod house. This was literally cutting great bricks of the prairie earth you need about an acre of prairie sod to do it. Sod Housesīecause there was no wood in most Great Plains communities, some newcomers experimented by building houses out of sod. This is a transcript from the video series A History of the United States, 2nd Edition. She described the way in which Anglo settlers, Bohemians, Germans, Russians and some French people were all living together. Other communities were multiethnic right from the start, and a lovely example is presented to us in Willa Cather’s novel My Antonia, one of the great masterpieces of literature about life on the early Great Plains. For example, there are lots of examples of Norwegian communities that moved intact from coastal Norway all the way out to the Minnesota plains.
Sometimes, entire communities would recreate themselves thousands of miles from their point of origin. The settlers who came from back East in the hope of setting up farms had to overcome very formidable hardships and obstacles, but nevertheless land hunger, both among people back East and particularly among European migrants, prompted many of them to take the risk and move to the Great Plains, especially from Britain, Ireland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. (Image: Photogal/Shutterstock) Early Settlers Benda.Scarcity of wood led people to experiment with Sod houses. The copy presented here is the thirteenth impression of the first edition, printed in March, 1924, with illustrations by Władysław T. Warning: template has been deprecated.- Excerpted from My Ántonia on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions in both children, affecting them lifelong. Both the pioneers who first break the prairie sod for farming, as well as of the harsh but fertile land itself, feature in this American novel. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting. This novel is considered Cather's first masterpiece. My Ántonia is the final book of Cather's "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.
0 kommentar(er)
