Prairie

Prairie (Fr., 'meadow') was the name given by the early French explorers of the northern portion of the Mississippi Valley, North America, to the vast fertile and treeless plains which extend from Western Ohio and Southern Michigan across the states of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota, including the southern portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The prairie region also extends northward into Canadian territory. These great plains or savannas are sometimes flat, but oftener rolling like the long swells of the ocean, and rise in gradual elevation from 300 to 1500 feet above the sea. See AMERICA, Vol. I, p. 215.