318 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW 



The physiography, climate, and soils of a region provide the 

 physical setting with certain limitations and advantages for 

 those who undertake to farm there. An intelligent comprehen- 

 sion of many phases of the subject, and especially the history of 

 agricultural production, including its shifts and adjustments, is 

 possible only if one considers the geographic factors. In this 

 respect, the historian, is of course, largely dependent on the 

 monographic literature of the geographers and the soil, climate, 

 and type-of-farming bulletins of the federal Department of Agri- 

 culture and the experiment stations. 



The history of the colonization and settlement of the Middle 

 West has been told many times and in many ways, and it is hoped 

 that further work on this phase of the subject will be concen- 

 trated on realities. In other words, historians should continue to 

 seek what Frederick Jackson Turner termed *'the vital forces" 

 that called American institutions into life and shaped them to 

 meet changing conditions. The social and economic status of the 

 settlers and of the succeeding generations of newcomers was a 

 factor in the development of their farmsteads and communities. 

 So also were the settlers' preconceived ideas of farming. Al- 

 though they may have attempted to follow the agricultural prac- 

 tices familiar to them in the localities from which they came, 

 they were compelled to respond to the actualities of their new 

 environments. The hesitation of the pioneers on the edge of the 

 prairies and their ultimate conquest of them is an interesting 

 and significant example." The reasons why the different groups 

 of settlers selected or perhaps simply found themselves on cer- 

 tain types of land also deserve attention. Probably it is not with- 

 out significance that New Englanders settled the oak openings 

 of Wisconsin, leaving the forest-covered land for the Germans, 

 and that the Finns seem to have selected a habitat as nearly sim- 

 ilar to that of their native land as they could find." 



The relation of the various immigrant elements to American 



11 William V. Pooley, Scttlcvient of Illinois, 18S0-1850 (Madison, 1908), chap. 14; 

 Joseph Schafer, Fonr Wisconsin Counties; Prairie and Forest (Madison, 1927), 

 chap. 6. 



12 Joseph Schafer, "The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin," Wisconsin Maga- 

 zine of History (Madison), VI (1922-1923), 125-145, 261-279, 386-402, VII (1923), 

 3-19, 148171; Horace H. Russell, "Finnish Farmers in America," Agricultural His- 

 tory, XI (1937), 65-79. 



