Understanding the Eastern Prairie in the United States

In the late 1600s, Father Claude Dablon was at the center of activity in the upper Midwest.\n Near the intersection of the Salt and Ohio Rivers: There is a considerable extent of fine land and traveling a few leagues farther southward, you arrive at extensive plains, which extend upwards of one hundred and fifty miles in a south-west course, and end only when they join the mountainous country. In Tennessee, between headwaters of rivers entering into the Mississippi River (Figure 4), the land was "covered with long grass, having little or no timber, except a small growth on the water courses were [and where] buffalo, elk, deer, and bear are numerous" (Smith 1793, 19).