Indiana as Wilderness

From age two to age seven, I lived (with my family, as was custom those days), in Warsaw, Indiana, a town so conservative that it actually held a book burning while we lived there--Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar; I have to admit that it's a little upsetting to think about that happening in the town with my first public library.

And while I don't really have a whole treasure trove of memories--I was in single digits the whole time, let me remind you--I do remember a few things that run counter to the popular conception of the Midwest as flyover country: a barn burning by the side of the highway, an ice skating rink in the middle of a mall's food court, a praying mantis walking along the cement of our front porch.

Small things, indeed, but they remind me that Indiana still holds the possibility of being a place of wilderness and wonder, a place that hangs out in the back of my mind while reading Mr. Jefferson's Hammer. We've gone back in time here, even from Harrison's month as President in 1840, to the early days of America, when Indiana Territory was about as far west as any white man went, and Harrison, fighter and territorial governor, made his fame and fortune. And although nothing as clear as we might like--the Battle of Tippicanoe, which makes WHH's reputation, gets exaggerated, and this is less cowboys-vs-Indians than it is the federal government pitting tribes against each other (and inter-tribal relationships aren't a whole lot better)--the Indiana of 1800 still feels like a place of potential, of danger and wildness, of the elements that make a history exciting.