Distinguished from surrounding regions—the Great Lakes, the Middle Atlantic, the
South, the Great Plains—by a blend of folk cultures brought together through historical
settlement patterns. The folk culture of the Midwestern states—including primarily
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri—developed as a consequence of waves of migration
into these middle states from the major folk-cultural source areas in New England, the
Middle Adantic, the Upland South, and the Lowland South.
The Midwest contains elements of these earlier folk cultures in its material culture and
its folk traditions; the influences can be found as a patchwork that often extends outside
the Midwest region. Ohio, with its predominantly Middle Atlantic, or Pennsylvania
German, folk culture, could be included in the region. The southern parts of the states of
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, which are predominantly influenced by New
England folk traditions, are often included. Also, the Ozark areas of Kentucky and
Arkansas could be included. The journal Midwest Folklore (formerly Hoosier Folklore)
often included commentary on material from these areas, and from areas as distant as
Nebraska and Kansas. However, Indiana and the three Midwestern states to its west share
some common features.
Geographically, the Midwest is Interior Lowland Topography. The inhabitants of the
region also share the Midland speech dialect, and they share features of the Midwest
Material Culture Region identified by folklorist Henry Glassie. The folk cultures of the
North, the Middle Atlantic, and the South overlap and mingle throughout the Midwest
region and also extend beyond it. The settlement process involved constant migration,
adaptation to changes in technology and popular culture, and adaptation to new waves of
immigration. The Pennsylvania bank barn, as one example, found most often in Ohio, can
be found with decreasing frequency to the west as far as Wisconsin and Nebraska. As
another example, folkways of the Upland South, such as English and Scots-Irish ballads,
found their way into the southern half of the Midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
and Missouri.
Some areas within the Midwest have retained the features of just one of the source
areas, and some areas retain unique folk cultures from other sources than the four major
Anglo American source areas. Features of Native American folk culture, such as the
foodways and folk medicine of the Ojibwa and Potowatomi tribes, have persisted into the
20th century. So have features of 18th-century French folk culture. In Illinois and
Missouri, for example, French settlers of Norman-Canadian background built log houses
with vertical posts. German immigration into the Midwestern states, beginning in the
1850s, produced many communities in the Midwest that have retained folk-cultural
features of their homeland.
Traditions of the Amish in Ohio, in the Amana Colony in Iowa, and among
Mennonites in Minnesota confirm the continued development of elements of German
folk culture in the Midwest. In addition, immigrant communities from many other parts
of the world—Poland, Lithuania, Mexico, Southeast Asia—have kept alive folk traditions in urban areas like Chicago, where they have established their own distinctive cultural
matrices. These separate folk traditions have persisted within the mainstream of
Midwestern folklore, just as Ozark folklore remains as a distinctive region in the southern
half of the Midwest states, and just as occupational folklore (railroad lore, mining lore,
factory lore, river lore, lumberjack lore) continues within it.
New England folk culture begins to appear in the Midwest with land grants to veterans
of the War of 1812. The material traits of this migration can be seen through the northern
Midwest: Yankee barns, Greek Revival house types, the saltbox house, and the temple-form house. New England foodways (including stoneware and
pottery), furniture, toolmaking, and stonecarving can be found through the Midwest
states. Covered bridges constructed on the Yankee-barn model appear from Indiana to
Iowa. The Yankee folk tradition merged in central Indiana and Illinois with folk
traditions from Pennsylvania Germans. The Cumberland Road from Baltimore to
Vandalia, Illinois, and the Wilderness Trail, from Philadelphia to Boonesboro, Kentucky,
opened up the Midwest to Middle Atlantic pioneers; features of their material culture and
folk traditions influenced the Midwest states from north to south.
Some Middle Atlantic traditions (folk art such as frakturs and folk tools such as yarn
reels) have continental European origins, while others (Conestoga wagons, Sgraffito
pottery decoration) are newer composite forms. The stone or log houses of Rhine Valley
origin, and Georgian-type cabins of British origin, were supplanted by the Pennsylvania
German house types. These distinctive houses, often with central chimney and
semiunderground cellars, made their way into the Midwest, as did the Pennsylvania bank
barn, which had a stone cellar and an earthen bank or ramp to allow vehicles to be drawn
to the second level. In the 1850s, homestead opportunities attracted waves of European,
mostly German, immigrants, and the Central Illinois Railway encouraged a landoffice
boom in Illinois. At the same time, steamboats on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers
provided Southern markets for the farm products of two million Midwestern farmers.
These developments also furthered migration of Southern Upland and Lowland
settlers into the Midwest. The Southern Upland settlers, following the Wilderness Trail to
Boonesboro from Virginia and the Carolinas, continued into southern parts of the
Midwest states. Settlers from the Lowland South and Appalachia populated the
distinctive Ozark Culture Region, with the “Little Egypt” area of Cairo, Illinois, as one
focal point and the Arkansas-Missouri border as another. The folk architecture of
Southern settlers included log buildings and buildings without stone foundations. These
constructions, along with the one-story Hall-and-Parlor house and the two-story Southern
I-frame house, appear in the Southern parts of the Midwest states. Machinery, log
construction, transverse or single-crib barns, and other elements of Southern material folk
culture can be found in the Midwest states as far east as Southern Ohio. Elements of
Southern folksongs and folktales can be found with them.
While these distinctive folk traditions from the North, Middle Atlantic, and the South
may be present in specific locales in the Midwest, collections of Midwest folklore have
tended to identify specific folk traditions within their local context. Modern researchers
in folklore in the Midwest have increasingly examined new forms of folk culture as
traditional genres of folklore are displaced by popular culture and by social or
technological changes. The traditional legends were developed in the 1820s around the
exploits of native character types; the Yankee peddler, the Mississippi keelboatman, and
the ringtail roarer remained into the 20th century, while the more transient figures of
Revolutionary War veteran and “old salt” Atlantic sailor did not typify the Midwest
region or occupations. The image of Mike Fink came to represent the folk-hero quality of
the Midwestern boatman on the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio, just as Davy Crockett
represented the heroic folk type of the hunter to woodsman of the new West.
Mark Twain recognized the importance of these heroes to the folk culture of the
Midwest when he incorporated setpieces of river lore in his works. He also captured the
superstitions and domestic folklore that Eastern settlers had brought together in a new formulation. In Tom Sawyer and in Huckleberry Finn, the household superstitions, animal
lore, witch lore, and supernatural lore from the Midwest region offered 19th-century
readers a new awareness of the transformations wrought by the frontier experience.
Twain’s treatment included superstitions later recorded by folklorists from both sides of
the Mississippi River. These collections, from the early 20th century, offered a
compendium of Midwest folk beliefs, a summary of wisdom accorded to American
household gods. There were beliefs and sayings that offered the Midwesterner insights
into the factors that could influence the conditions of his life—the weather, the condition
of livestock and harvest, the comings and goings of neighbors, the uncertainties of
courtship and child rearing, the mysteries of death and the supernatural.
The folklore of the Midwest shows a culture rich in awareness of the potential for
signs and omens in everyday life. The spirit world manifested itself in ghost stories, witch
lore, and various forms of divination. The extent of awareness by informants of
conditions allowing for good luck and bad luck may serve as an indication of a passive
acceptance of the operation of nonmaterial influences in the world. The extent of
references to conjuration and “hoodoo” indicates an even wider belief in the operation of
magic and the supernatural. While such beliefs were undoubtedly more widespread in the
Deep South, particularly among African American “power doctors,” they are also found
in the Midwest.
In the Upper Midwest (Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota), such Southern influences
are harder to find. The supernatural lore of French Canadian loup-garou tales, or the
Chippewa Wenebojo and Windigo tales, are more common themes than stories of conjure
doctors and witchcraft. The heroes of the Upper Midwest are daring figures from the
lumber camps, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan mining camps, and the ore boats of the
Great Lakes. Also, unique ethnic influences have produced traditions of folk humor, such
as the Scandinavian Ole and Lena jokes, which are rarely found south of the Great Lakes
region.
After the development of university studies in folklore, and the development of
folklore journals in Indiana and Missouri, efforts began to find examples of folkways
beyond the traditional genres. Folklorists found material in factories as well as farms, and
in cities as well as rural communities. In the countryside of southern Indiana and Illinois,
attention was now paid to a variety of entertainment forms and occupational activities.
The camp meetings and minstrel shows of the 19th century were gone, with only the
Toby shows surviving as a final remnant. The threshing bees and communal farming
activities were no longer necessary with the advent of modern technology in farming. The
lore of the steamboat, the railroad, and the mining camp likewise began to wane. With
traditional folktales and folksongs now in the memories of individuals rather than alive
among whole communities, collecting efforts required much more attention to context.
Efforts to record the narrative explanations and procedures in traditional activities like
cane making, folksong transmission, or storytelling are more important than ever in the
collection of Midwestern folklore.
The folklore of the factory, the office, the school, and the mall have become more
important in recent years. The features of modern Midwestern life still allow
opportunities for serious collectors in a variety of areas: urban legends, joke lore,
children’s lore, hunting and fishing lore, and more.
John Schleppenbach
References
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Folkways of the Mid-American River Country. New York: Crown.
Brewster, Paul G. 1940. Ballads and Songs of Indiana. Publications in Folklore Series No. 1.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Dégh, Linda. 1976. Symbiosis of Joke and Legend: A Case of Conversational Folklore. In Folklore
Today: A Festschrift for Richard M.Dorson, ed. Linda Dégh, Henry Glassie, and Felix J. Oinas.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 81–91.
Dorson, Richard M. 1964. Buying the Wind: Regional Folklore in the United States. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Fischer, David Hackett. 1989. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Glassie, Henry. 1968. Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kramer, Frank R. 1964. Voices in the Valley: Mythmaking andFolk Belief in the Shaping of the
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Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1973. The Cultural Geography of the United States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
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