Abstract
“Among the Corn-Rows,” a short story appearing in Hamlin Garland's Main-Travelled Roads (1891), opens with a telling dialogue between homesteader Rob Rodemaker and Seagraves, a local newspaper editor. At one point during their exchange, Rodemaker explains why he left his native Waupac County in Wisconsin to settle further west in the Dakota Territory: “We fellers workin' out back there got more ‘n’ more like hands, an' less like human beings. Y' know, Waupac is a kind of summer resort, and the people that use' t' come in summers looked down on us cusses in the fields an' shops. I couldn't stand it.”
