Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Early French explorers gave us our word prairie,
which means something roughly equivalent to meadow.
But a prairie is much more than a word.
It is a living community of plants and animals and soil.
(prairie chicken sounds)
It is wind and water and time.
(train whistle)
It is Missouri history.
Prairie once meant “lordly elk.”
It was wolves denning in the coolies.
It was coyotes seeking a living off small mammals.
It was the shaggy bison, which dominated the sea of grass.
Today the most spectacular surviving wildlife is the prairie chicken,
which has become symbolic of all of all that once meant prairie to Missouri's first man.
(Indian chant)
The Indian was a part of yesterday's prairie,
and he took his livelihood from its bounty.
Some of his dances mimic the strut and stamp of his wild neighbors, the prairie chickens.
(drumming and chanting)
We've changed all that.
The wild Indian is gone,
as the buffalo are gone,
as the great flights of waterfowl splashing in the prairie marshes are gone, almost.
Elk and bison gave way to domestic livestock.
Prairie sod to corn, wheat, and oats, almost,
but not quite.
And the almost is what this film is about.
We can yet save some of our precious native prairie.
(music)
(prairie chicken sounds)
With each sunrise in spring,
prairie chickens come together in an ancient mating ritual reaching back to the first dawn.
(prairie chicken sounds)
The birds gather on high places in the prairie,
traditional spots known as booming grounds.
Here, each male stakes out a breeding territory,
which he defends against rival neighbors.
The most aggressive birds get the most desirable territories.
(prairie chicken sounds)
The male's courtship display is vigorous,
rapidly stamping his feet up and down in a dance
and then uttering his powerful three-note boom.
(prairie chicken sounds)
In April, females come onto the breeding grounds and mating takes place.
(prairie chicken sounds)
On early spring mornings, calls can be heard several miles across the prairie,
a sound once as common as today's roar of the tractor.
(Prairie chicken sounds)
The antics of prairie chickens amused the Indian
and were obvious inspirations for some of his wilder dances.
(Indian chanting and drums)
The prairie stands brazenly exposed in all its floral glory to sun and wind.
Its showy flowers dress up the grassy landscape through spring, summer and fall.
Phlox and Indian Paintbrush rear gaudy blossoms to the sky
Compass Plant nods to its neighbor Purple Gay Feather,
and both blow in the prairie wind.
But above all, a prairie is grass.
The dominant grasses are bluestems and Indian grass,
but a host of others-dropseed, switch grass, grama, threeawn, and purple top-
add their wealth to the prairie sod.
It was the soil's wealth that presaged the doom of the great Missouri prairies.
It took 25 million years to bring the prairie to the stage where we found it.
But we let it slip away,
day by day, at first to moldboard plow and oxen,
then to strip mine, highway, and housing development.
(prairie chicken sounds)
Is it not sad to think that we may be the last generation of Missourians
to have an opportunity to see and hear the ancient dance of the prairie chicken?
We may well be,
unless we act now to ensure the prairie's survival
and the perpetuation of the wild things that are a part of this living community.
(prairie chicken sounds)
(music)