Word for 'prairie'

[Alan Hartley]

Michael Mccafferty wrote:

> Bob's comments about prairie and plains makes me think of something I saw
> recently in a French trader's itinerary, where he calls the the wet
> prairie of the Kankakee a "plaine" (actually spelled "plenne") and then in
> parentheses, to explain what he means, he says "pays bas," which means
> "lowland". From this account it appears that in the West, Frenchmen were
> using "plains" to mean something slightly different from what is typically
> taken as the meaning of the word.

The original meaning of 'plain' in English was similar, and its sense
was extended when English-speakers encountered the Plains. The Dict. of
Amer. English defines the earlier sense (from 1608 in N. Amer.) as "a
comparatively  small, well-defined tract of level land free or nearly
free from trees and readily cultivable" and the later sense (from 1755,
born in N. Amer.) as "an extensive region of level or rolling treeless
country; prairie." William Clark uses it explicitly for what we now call
a flood-plain (a. below), and also in the Great Plains sense (d. or e.
below).

DAE's discussion of PRAIRIE is more detailed:

1. A level or rolling area of land, destitute of trees and usually
covered with grass. {a1682, of a meadow in France}
    This word has been applied to areas of different types in different
parts of the country, giving rise to the following specific senses:
    a. A meadow, esp. one alongside a river; a relatively small area of
low-lying grassland. (See also bottom, swamp, wet prairie.)
    b. A grass-covered opening in a forest; a savannah. (See alo high,
ridge, upland prairie.)
    c. A level open area about a town, house, etc.
    d. A broad expanse of level or rolling land in the Indiana,
Illinois, and Mississippi Valley country, covered by coarse grass. (See
also grand, open prairie.)
    e. An extensive plateau to the west of the Mississippi. In pl.,
frequently referring to the entire area between the Mississippi River
and the Rocky Mountains. (See also great, hog-wallow, open, rolling,
western prairie.)

My Lewis-and-Clark enry for PLAIN:

PLAIN  A relatively level, usually grass-covered, mostly treeless tract
of land, nearly synonymous with PRAIRIE in the journals. (Clark
translates the French Prairie du Chien as the Dog Plains [2.458] and
virtually equates 'plain' and 'prairie' in his entries below.) A plain
can be large or small, low land or high. As with prairie, the captains’
use of the word expanded, after they reached the Mississippi, to include
not only the grassy, cultivable BOTTOM lands along the rivers--now
called flood plains--but also the seemingly limitless higher and drier
grasslands we call the (Great) Plains.

the plains and woodlands are here [near St. Louis] indiscriminately
interspersed [20 May 04 ML 2.240]

the plain on which it [St. Charles, Missouri] stands is narrow [20 May
04 ML 2.241]

on the L[arboard]. S[ide]. is a butifull Bottom Prarie whuch will
Contain about 2000 acres [10 Jul 04 WC 2.364]
on the L. S. is a butifull bottom Plain of about 2000 acres [10 Jul 04
WC 2.365]

Came Suddenly into an open and bound less Prarie, I Say bound less
because I could not See the extent of the plain in any Derection..this
Prarie was Covered with grass about 18 Inches or 2 feat high [19 Jul 04
WC 2.394]

Alan