A Fruitful Plain: Fertility on the Tallgrass Prairie, 1810–1860

Early Euroamerican settlers to the tallgrass prairie region of the Midwest considered how the environment benefitted or hindered their fertility. Both men and women sought the prairie as a fertile land for reproduction, and their hopes for progeny shaped the transformation of the prairie ecosystem. The prairie landscape was more than a passive space where humans projected fantasies, however. The prairie may have altered the fertility of Euroamerican bodies, even as it influenced settlers' ideas about sexuality and reproduction. Men and women perceived the tallgrass prairie as possessing the power to affect fertility, and they sought this unique environment for its ability to sustain family farms and a healthy civilization.