Mary Hartwell Catherwood (1847 -1902) was a novelist born in Luray, Ohio and as an adult lived in several cities in the Midwest. She developed a signature style of incorporating Midwestern culture, dialect, and local color into her texts. Although most of her novels and stories are set in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, some are also based along the American border with French Canada and on colonial Mackinac Island. In this volume, she put her expertise in the history of the period to use in writing a history rather than a novel. Chapter headings are:

-The Discoverers of the Upper Mississippi
-Bearers of the Calumet
-The Man with the Copper Hand
-The Undespairing Norman
-French Settlements
-The Last Great Indian