This is a major document of early Illinois and Wisconsin history written with flair by an observant and energetic woman. Kinzie, married to the only US government Indian Agent in the area, was an erudite easterner who found herself living at Lake Winnebago in what now is Wisconsin. She travelled a lot from Wisconsin to Chicago and back. In this book she describes the pleasures and difficulties of frontier life, the days of Chicago when the civilian population was less than 50, relations between Indians and white men, the Sauk War of 1832, the world of fur trading, the slow growth of Chicago towards metropolis, and incorporates several Indian folktales into her narrative. "An eastern woman, Kinzie was imbured with the comanticism of the frontier, but also had a sharp eye for detail and a fine sense of humor".