Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.
So begins the fascinating chronicle of Laura Ingalls Wilder, one of the best-loved American writers of the twentieth century, who grew up with the young country, following the Western trails in a covered wagon with her remarkable family. At the age of sixty-three, Wilder began writing her “Little House” books, a fictional series that reflects the essential truth of the pioneer experience and of the Ingalls family who lived it. “I wanted the children now to understand more about the beginning of things, to know what is behind the things they see — what it is that made America as they know it,” Wilder said in a 1937 address. “I had seen the whole frontier; the woods, the Indian country of the great plains, the frontier towns, the building of railroads in wild, unsettled country, homesteading and farms coming in to take possession. I realized that I had seen and lived it all — all the successive phases of the frontier, first the frontiersman, then the pioneer, then the farmers, and the towns.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder - The Author
Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born in the “Big Woods” near Pepin, Wisconsin, on February 7, 1867, to Charles Philip and Caroline Lake Quiner Ingalls, a young homesteading couple. Charles’s family had moved to Wisconsin from New York state when he was a boy; Caroline’s family were originally from Connecticut, though she herself was born in Wisconsin. Charles had grown up in the Wisconsin woods near the Oconomowoc River and had learned the frontiersman’s skills: hunting, trapping, farming, felling trees, and building dwellings and crafting their furnishings. In addition to these practical abilities, Charles Ingalls was also an accomplished violinist and singer, enlivening many gatherings with his music making and good spirits.
Caroline Quiner received her teaching certificate at the age of sixteen; she loved reading and writing poetry and other compositions and, in the words of her daughter Laura, “was proud and particular in all matters of good breeding.” Charles and Caroline raised the close, affectionate family that was later immortalized in the Little House books, written in loving tribute by their daughter Laura many years after the pioneering adventure ended.
Laura’s homely tales of pioneer life sold millions of copies, remaining continuously in print after the first of them appeared in the 1930s. To the Depression era they offered reminders of another time, when people enduring hardship found joy in simple things like the sound of a fiddle and warm family relationships. Decades later Wilder’s characters and settings won over another generation in a long-running television series. An honest, unsentimental, and vivid combination of storytelling, history, and autobiography, Wilder’s books captured the maturing both of an individual and of a country.
Like the Laura of her novels, Wilder spent her early childhood in a house built by her father, Charles Ingalls, in a Wisconsin forest. Her first novel, Little House in the Big Woods, draws on Wilder’s actual experiences in Wisconsin, but like the series as a whole it does not follow her life exactly. As Janet Spaeth noted in her book Laura Ingalls Wilder, Wilder’s intention in writing the books “demanded a refashioning of the events of her life to retain the larger truth that she wanted to convey — the pioneer experience in America.” Little House in the Big Woods depicts this in detail.
“All I have told is true, but not the whole truth.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
In Little House in the Big Woods the Ingallses are isolated from most other people, so they do many things for themselves. They smoke their own meat, raise their own vegetables, and make almost everything else they need, from butter to bullets. On rare trips to town they trade for other supplies, such as cloth, gunpowder, salt, tea, tobacco, and “store sugar,” which they use for special occasions instead of their homemade maple sugar. Formal schooling is not available. Laura and her older sister, Mary, learn only what their parents can teach them, which includes reading, housekeeping chores and other farm tasks, and good manners. Pa entertains the family with stories and his fiddle playing. In the pioneer setting, the family serves as its own small community, and good family relations and values are very important.
In Little House on the Prairie Wilder chronicled the family’s move from the Big Woods to the Great Plains, which the government has promised will soon be open to settlement. Traveling in a covered wagon, they cross the frozen Mississippi River and make their way to the grassy prairie. A new house goes up, with shingled roof, stone fireplace and chimney, and a door assembled with pegs instead of nails. Wilder describes each bit of construction step by step.
After a brief return to Wisconsin, the Ingallses soon moved west again. This time they settled in a dugout house near the Minnesota town of Walnut Grove, where On the Banks of Plum Creek begins. This book shows a changing and challenging frontier, where Pa must build a house with purchased lumber instead of logs he has felled himself, the girls attend school and church for the first time, and grasshopper plagues devastate the family’s cash crops. Over these years Laura becomes more aware of her parents’ concerns and her own growing responsibilities. By the Shores of Silver Lake presents further evidence of her growth and the spread of civilization. Two years of disastrous farming and dwindling game have taxed the family’s resources, and Mary has lost her sight to illness. Pa accepts an offer to go west to work for the railroad, and the story follows the Ingallses into the Dakota Territories — an area that later became the states of Wyoming, Montana, and North and South Dakota. Ma and the girls come after Pa on a train, and Wilder’s account of this trip suggests some of the origins of her later storytelling ability. When Mary went blind, Pa had told Laura to serve as her eyes, and throughout the train ride young Laura describes for Mary everything about the train and the passing landscape in great detail — much the way she later described everything in her books for her reading audience. Laura’s increasing maturity shows in her decision to work toward a teaching certificate — even though she does not really want to teach — so that she can help the family send Mary to a school for the blind.
In The Long Winter the Ingallses settle into a little shanty on the new homestead in De Smet, in what became South Dakota. Laura takes an ever more active part in adult work. Watching Pa trying to cut and stack his hay by himself, she offers to help, and the two of them together do the work in half the time it would have taken Pa alone. Later, Laura recognizes her more adult role, reflecting that she is “old enough now to stand beside [Pa] and Ma in hard times.” The Long Winter recounts some very hard times. An early frost comes, and after a brief Indian summer the blizzards begin. Wilder’s account of the long snowbound months with meager rations prompted some critics to call the book one of the most impressive of the series.
Wilder depicted the maturation of both Laura and De Smet in Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. The community grows rapidly, with new settlers arriving constantly and new buildings going up in the area, including two new schools and a new church. Losing some of the independence that made them pioneers, the townsfolk come to depend more and more on others for entertainment and for goods and services they once could have provided for themselves. Laura earns her first wages by sewing in town, and soon she leaves home to teach for a two-month term. As she becomes more independent, she attends social functions both with and without her family and begins to go on outings with homesteader and horse-trainer Almanzo Wilder. In her last two books the author develops Almanzo’s relationship with Laura from their first casual drives together to their marriage. By the end of the series the town is well established and Laura has grown up to be a housewife.
Combining gifts of observation, memory, and storytelling, Wilder created a legacy in children’s literature. More than just the account of one life, her books became a record of a dynamic period of American history and a testament to the courage, resourcefulness, family values, and optimism that shaped a young nation. Wilder’s saga has pleased generations of readers and critics alike. Writing in Junior Bookshelf, Colwell marveled at “the seeing eye of the poet” revealed in the “Little House” books, and others hailed Wilder for depicting well-rounded characters who grow and mature over the course of the series. Her simple yet detailed, direct, and honest prose also won praise; several writers remarked on how the increasing complexity of the prose parallels Laura’s own development. Summarizing the quality of the books in Atlantic Monthly, Susan Bagg commented, “You are reading something that promised to be entertainment and that turns out to be art.”