John Mack Faragher on the challenges of hog driving in antebellum America

"In December 1836, an enterprising local miller bought up more than a thousand hogs from Sugar Creek farms and drove them down the road to American Bottom. Twenty miles south of the Creek a sudden drastic drop in temperature caught him and his men, threatening them with killing cold.  As they raced in panic for the shelter of a nearby cabin, their hogs began desperately to pile up on each other for warmth.  Those on the inside smothered, those on the outside froze, creating a monumental pyramid of ham, frozen on the hoof."

Source: John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986), 103.