Little House on the Prairie: Wilder's Frontier on the Plains

Identification (time period/major theme)

Laura Ingalls Wilder was born on February 7, 1867, near Pepin, Wisconsin. She spent most of her childhood traveling around the Midwest. Her family relocated several times in states such as Kansas, Minnesota and South Dakota. She reflects on her childhood in her historical fiction book series. The most popular of these books is Little House on the Prairie, but others include Little House in the Big Woods and The Long Winter. She also wrote a book about her husband, Almanzo Wilder, and his life growing up on a farm in New York. This book was titled Farmer Boy. The time period that Wilder’s books cover is basically 1869-1890. The stories told in Little House on the Prairie took place from 1869-1870 (when Laura was two-three years old). Because she was so young, she did not remember many of the incidents she writes in this book. They were told to Wilder by her parents and her older sister Mary. She also did a great amount of historical research into the time period to get the details correct.

Overview of interpretations of the era/issues

Little House on the Prairie begins with the Ingalls family moving from Wisconsin to Kansas. They did this because they were aware of the land on the prairie being opened up for settlement. In Born in the Country, David Danbom goes into detail about this opening of the Great Plains that was the root of the Ingalls’ move. Danbom describes the years between 1870 and 1900 as a time of dramatic expansion in rural America. Remember, this is almost the exact time period that Laura Ingalls grew up during. Most of this expansion was because of the opening of the Great Plains, which was considered the last major American agricultural frontier. Between 1870 and 1900, the number of farms in Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota increased from 50,000 to nearly 400,000.

Although the idea of settling on the Great Plains had its pros, it certainly had its cons as well. Transportation was one problem that potential settlers faced. Ground transportation was expensive and few rivers were navigable. Eventually, railroads solved this problem after receiving government encouragement. The more serious problem, and the one given most attention by Pa Ingalls, was the threat of American Indian groups. On the first page of Little House on the Prairie, Laura refers to their destination as “Indian country.” These people (of the Sioux, Comanche, Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes) were better adapted for life on the Great Plains because they were familiar with it. They tended to be hostile and difficult to control as well. This seemed to be something that Pa Ingalls feared when taking his wife and young children there, but he still preferred the idea of living on the prairie to living in the woods.

In reading an article that was published in a December 1871 issue of Prairie Farmer, I realized that another problem was the lack of knowledge about how to survive and raise a family on the Great Plains. Danbom also brings up this point and actually refers to the problem as “a strangeness of the region.” The author of this article tells that, on the plains, it is far more important to raise livestock than grain. He says the land is “fitted by nature in every way for grazing purposes and grain growing for a profit should not be attempted.”

Critique/Conclusions

There is something very ironic about analyzing the public’s perception of this time period focused on the settlement of the Great Plains. Most of their ideas and depictions of this settlement come from works such as Little House on the Prairie. It isn’t until you read other (not as well-known) books and articles that you get a different perspective. Although Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books tell frightening, more serious stories (such as encounters with Indians and wolves), the overall theme seems to be sugar-coated for young children. The book series includes the serious themes going on at the time, but is focused more on being a fun “frontier family” work of historical fiction. So, I would say that people who base their perception of this time period solely on the writing of Laura Ingalls Wilder are missing the intensity of other themes going on at the time. Because the majority of her stories are true, readers are not getting a false impression—they just might not be getting the entire “story.”

References

Danbom, David S. Born in the Country. Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 2006.

“Little House on the Prairie.” Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia. 5 Oct 2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_House_on_the_Prairie>

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1935.

[Author Unknown]. “Stock Raising in the Far West.” Prairie Farmer. 42.51 (23 Dec. 1871): 387.

Molly Vial, Pontiac IL