Giants in the Earth

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Summary

Book I, Chapter IV—"What the Waving Grass Revealed"

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Summary Book I, Chapter IV—"What the Waving Grass Revealed"

It is clear that the Norwegians are prejudiced against the Irish. They even call the Irish trolls because they think that the Irish belong to a lower class than themselves. In nineteenth-century America, ethnic differences such as nationality and religion often separated people, even those who might be considered members of the same race. Although the Great Plains was a mixing bowl of multiple ethnicities, like large cities such as New York, many early settlers associated only with their own group. Members of a particular ethnic group often settled in the same community with one another, just as members of the same ethnic group lived in a same neighborhood—such as Little Italy or Chinatown—in a large city.

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