1. Which of the following is not correct about the tall grass prairie peninsula.
a.-- It is a peninsula of prairie projecting into the eastern hardwood forests. b.-- It is technically a savanah. c.-- It is primarily hydric. d.-- It is ecologically different from the short grass prairies of the Great Plains.
2. To what area is the arrow pointing?
a.-- The Tippecanoe River Valley b.-- The Darby Plains c.-- The American Bottoms d.-- The "deep prairie"
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3. The peninsula has been called the most accessible place on the planet. Which of the following is not true in that regard?
a.-- The rivers that made it accessible were a barrier to travel within the deep prairie. b.-- In prehistory and in history it has been central to many cultures more than the center of any particular culture. c.-- As railroads and the interstate highway system have become important the prairie still remains a centrally accessible location. d.-- All the above are true.
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4. Which of the following is not true about the tall grass prairie peninsula?
a.-- It is the tall grass portion of what Edgar Transeau termed "the prairie peninsula." (Much of Transeau's "prairie peninsula" is not made up of tall grass, however.) b.-- It is unique for its tall grasses. c.-- It is sometimes called the "black soil prairie" because its soil is rich in humus. d.-- Prehistoric burial mounds and earthworks are characteristic of virtually the entire area.
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5. Settlers to the Darby Plains Prairies were more familiar with woodlands than prairies. Which of the following is not true in that regard?
a.-- They tended to view the transitional areas between the edge of the woodlands and the edge of the prairie to be woodland, not prairie. b.-- They considered areas that were not heavily wooded to be "barrens." (To this day, the areas with abundant wild blueberries harvested for commercial processing are known as "blueberry barrens.") c.-- They tended to view prairie animals like bison and elk as woodland animals and fruits such as strawberries and raspberries as woodland fruits. d.-- Their first choice for farmland was woodlands they cleared. e.-- All the above are true.
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6. Which of the following is not true about the prairie as "the land with nothing there"?
a.-- Explorers were struck with its diversity and abundance. b.-- Explorers (like the early settlers) often viewed it merely as a wasteland to be crossed to get to someplace else. c.-- It is often just viewed as a bunch of big (very big) weeds. d.-- All the above are true.
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7. Which of the following is not true regarding the prairie as the "wild, wild, west"?
a.-- It was the land of cattle drives. b.-- It was the land of bison. c.-- It was the land of free range; farmers could be taken to court if they molested a neighbor's livestock that was eating their corn or other crops. d.-- It was the land of sod corn. e.-- All of the above are true.
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8. What is not true about the term "floodplains"?
a.-- The term is often used to mean "drainage area" or "bottomland." b.-- As we use the term, it refers only to alluvial floodplains, that is, mudflats created as a river overflows its banks and lays down a new layer of soil. c.-- Another kind of floodplains are colluvial mudflats made up of soil washed down from higher grounds. d.-- Floodplains account for only a miniscule portion of the area of the tall grass prairie peninsula. e.-- All the above are true.
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9. Which of the following is not correct about tall grass prairie plants as cultivated plants, that is, as cultigens?
a.-- Weeds are prairie plants that thrived in disturbed prairie contexts. b.-- Cultigens such as grains and ornamentals (that is, flowers) are prairie plants that thrived in undisturbed prairie contexts. c.-- Cultigens are usually early colonizers. d.-- All of the above.
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10. True or False? The tall grass prairie peninsula is the product of thousands of years of effort on the part of Native Americans to preserve, improve, and enlarge it.
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11. Which of the following is not true about bison on the prairie?
a.-- Bison played a crucial role in maintaining the health and diversity of the prairie ecology. b.-- Bison have played this role since shortly after the prairie developed 6-8,000 years ago. c.-- Bison have been an important resource for tall grass prairie people since that time. d.-- Bison were usually slaughtered on the prairie and then the meat, hides, and so forth brought back to the camp or settlement. e.-- All of the above.
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12. Which of the following is correct about prairie fires?
a.-- It was caused by dry lightning during the "dog days" of summer. b.-- It was due to aboriginal burning. c.-- It was something of a necessary evil; it often did substantial harm to the prairie plants and animals. d.-- None of the above
13. Which of the following is not correct about the Ionian region of the eastern Mediteranean?
a.-- About 2,500 years ago it was at the crossroads between rich cultures of Europe and Asia minor. b.-- The islands and inlets offered room for ideas to flourish. c.-- In many ways it was similar to the tall grass prairie peninsula. d.-- The people developed innovative ways to use bison resources.
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1. Right.
The prairie is technically a savanah, because it is interspersed with trees.
Very little of the area is made up of hydric soil, that is, soil that is under water enough of the time that this standing water shapes its content and texture. Much of the area is bottomland, but that is nothing at all like hydric.
. 2. Right.
The tall grass prairie becomes woodland in a relatively few years if it is not burned off every three or four or so years. And this prairie fire is almost never the result of natural causes such as "dry lightning" during the dog days of summer. Indeed, during these summer days the prairie is at its greenest. The "persistence of the prairie" is the result of Native Americans burning off that prairie regularly.
. 3. Right.
Of course in prehistory the peninsula was the center of very significant cultures such as that at Cahokia. But by and large it was characterized by comings and goings and of developments and then other developments. In other areas that were more "off the beaten path" the cultures underwent less rapid and significant change.
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4. All right! Good job.
This point was not made in the text, but since the other answers are all true, this must be the incorrect one. Yes, there are other tall grass prairies or grand prairies in North America, as the city Grand Prairie, Texas, might suggest. The prairie peninsula is not the only prairie with tall grasses.
And although plows and bulldozers may have eliminated any sign of many of them, prehistoric burial mounds and earthworks were once characteristic of virtually the entire area.
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5. You got it.
For all their romantic odes to the majesty and abundant resources offered by the stately woodlands, the prime real estate on which the settlers first chose to settle was the prairies. It was prairies on the edge of the woodlands, but prairies nonetheless.
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6. Right.
The explorers may have recorded observations about the beauty and abundant richness of the prairies in their diaries, but the sheer size of this beauty and abundance became monotonous. And those explorers offered the lament similar to those often heard today: "There's absolutely nothing on I-55 between Chicago and St. Louis" or "One you cross the Wabash on I-74 there's nothing until you get to ..."
. 7. Right.
All those things are true about the "wide, open spaces" of the peninsula.
Click here for a word about sod corn.
One often hears or reads comments about settlers planting sod corn by making a slit in the prairie sod with an axe and dropping in a few kernals of corn. And no doubt that was the way it sometimes happened. It was not much different from chopping a slit in the prairie with a stone hoe and dropping in the corn, which is what the Native Americans had been doing for centuries. Over time the prairie grasses, which were not very resistant to disturbance, died out.
Most settlers, however, had the benefit of some sort of plow to tear at the roots of the prairie grasses. It may have been a pretty primitive wooden one with the plowshear tipped with metal, but its use over time help convert prairie to farmland.
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8. Yep. You got it.
Colluvial landforms are washes that are slopes or taluses, not mudflats.
Let's take a moment to make a point about the term "flood plain." The term is often used in a very general sense of bottomland. Indeed, it seems that in some discussions anything that is not a mountain is a floodplain. And there is nothing wrong with that general usage. There is nothing wrong with saying, for example, that St. Louis or West Layfayette is located on a floodplain.
The problem comes when we begin to confuse that general usage with a literal flood plain, in other words, an allluvial flood plain created when a river regularly overflows its banks and lays down a layer of new soil. The literal term applies to only a miniscule portion of the tall grass prairie peninsula. It certainly does not apply to St. Louis or West Layfayette, since those cities are not regularly underwater. And the lives of the people living there are not shaped or defined by dealing with the annual flooding of rivers.
Right.
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10. The statement is false.
We sometimes make the mistake of romanticizing things, of imputing to the people of antiquity (and modern people, for that matter) attributes that are really not very valid. Those people in antiquity who burned off the praririe, for example, had no ideas about the prairie or Corn Belt that would result in their actions a few thousand years later. They just did what they did to live their daily lives. Indeed, perhaps many times the prairie fires were accidental.
. 9. Right.
Both weeds and cultigens are plants that are more at home in disturbed prairies than undisturbed prairies. Although it is true farmers and gardeners sometimes cultivate perennial plants that may take a rather long time to get established, in most cases cultigens are early colonizers. They thrive immediately wherever they are given the opportunity.
In general, about the only place one will find prairie plants of undisturbed or "high quality" prairies is there, in restored or maintained undisturbed prairies. Or they may be found as long-term landscape plants or specimen plants planted and maintained in their special undisturbed niche.
11. Right.
Bison played a crucial role in maintaining the health and diversity of the prairie ecology since shortly after the prairie developed 6-8,000 years ago. But they were not an important part in the subsistence of prairie people until a few hundred years ago.
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12. Right.
Prairie fires caused by nature were exceedingly rare. The "dog days" of summer that sometimes produce "dry lightning" come at the time when the prairie is as at its greenest. The prairie fires that made possible the "persistence of the prairie" were almost entirely due to aboriginal burning.
In general prairie plants and animals were so well adapted to prairie fire that they were invigorated and enriched by it.
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Right. The mosaic of prairie and woodlands in central Ohio is the Darby Plains prairies. The American Bottoms is a small area in southern Illinois, east of St. Louis Missouri.
What we are calling the "deep prairie" is the main body of the tall grass prairie peninsula centered in Illinois.
13. Right.
That was a toughie, wasn't it?
We will end the tutorial on that note.
Hope you found it valuable.
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Comments, suggestions and information is more than welcome. Send to: jfay@prairienet.org
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