The Little House on the Prairie

Yesterday I finished reading The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was only a few months ago that I found out that this is a true story and that Laura Ingalls was a real person. When I was a boy back in the mid-1970s, we used to watch the TV series on Sunday afternoons on STV after Cartoon Cavalcade. The story is actually the second in a series of books in which Laura Ingalls looks back at her childhood as she and her family move west. Although exact dates and ages are not mentioned in the books, websites on the Ingalls family state that this story is set in 1873-1874, when Laura was aged between five and seven. At the beginning of the story, her father decides to leave his kinfolk and venture from Pepin, Wisconsin to set up a farm 12 miles from the town of Independence, Kansas. The book is told from the little girl’s viewpoint, and does not offer much of an explanation for this apparently ludicrous upheaval. However, a little research showed that Mr. Ingalls was induced by the possibility of obtaining 160 acres of free land that was offered (through the Homestead Act of 1862) to anyone willing to settle the region. The problem is that the land in question is claimed by the Osage Indians.

It is a nice little story of a close family venturing into unknown territory in pursuit of the American dream. The children and Mrs. Ingalls are ruled by the kind but firm hand of Charles, or Pa as they call him. However, Mr. Ingalls takes some risks that can only be described as madness and the whole family nearly drowns before they reach the prairie land because of his rash decision to cross a creek in the wrong place. But they eventually reach their destination in one piece and Pa builds a house with nothing more than felled trees and a few borrowed nails. Adventures follow: trouble with the Indians, starting a farm, building a barn, trading in the nearby town, meeting the neighbours and fighting a prairie fire. There are also general descriptions of daily life and the surrounding lands. At the end of the story, the family are informed that troops have been sent to remove the settlers because the government have decided to side with the Indians. Mr. Ingalls reacts angrily and announces the family’s immediate departure. The end.

Some contemporary readers have been alarmed by the openly racist language used in the book. The normally wise, polite and docile Ma has harsh words for the Indians, and the sentence “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” occurs several times in the story. But as this is the way people spoke back in the day, I think it has to be kept in the text to preserve its authenticity. We only see the situation through the eyes of the Ingalls family and their neighbours. We don’t see the Indians in their camp. I’m sure there were Indians who said that the only good white man was a dead one. Another opinion that troubles modern readers is the argument, again forwarded by Mrs. Ingalls, that surely the land ought to belong to the people willing to farm it and that the Indians only roam around like wild animals. The Indians are also portrayed as thieves, entering the Ingalls home and stealing food and tobacco.

I enjoyed this story, and intend to read more of the books in the series. I wonder if the characters will turn out to be as they were portrayed in the television series. I noticed that in the last book, These Happy Golden Years, one of the chapters is called Nellie Olsen. I remember her as the blond, snobby nemesis of the Ingalls girls in the TV show. I wonder what she was like in real life.