On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip From South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  The man who seems to be the head of the tribe, or commune or whatever it is, said they came here five years ago and now they own 17 quarter sections. They have herds of cattle, good horses, and 300 geese.

  Just at dusk a boy came with a great big fish and wanted to know if we would pay for it. The men were gone and Emma Cooley and I did not know what it was worth. The boy said we might have it for a dime but Emma and I could not scrape up a dime between us. We were about to give up, when the men came and bought the fish. In a few minutes the boy came back with two smaller ones and wanted 15 cents for them but finally took ten.

  We are going to sleep tonight to the sound of running water. Manly killed a snake this eve.

  Sunday, July 22

  We all took a bath this morning. Mr. and Mrs. Cooley and the children went into the river. Paul and George had a rope around them and tried to swim. Rose went out with Mrs. Cooley, she had a rope around her and I held on to its end. She went out waist deep and paddled around, and sat down up to her chin.

  The Russians have hung around us all day, children and grown folks both. They cannot talk and they understand only a little. They are very kind, they brought milk and a great pan of biscuits, and gave them to us, showing us that they were presents. The biscuits are light and very good. We got to feel a little acquainted with the folks, told them all our names and asked theirs and let them swing in the hammock and sit in the chairs. They are very curious and want to examine everything, talking about it to each other.

  They wanted us to come to their houses, so Manly and I went. They showed us the geese and we watched the milkmaids milk. They look like the pictures of German and Russian milkmaids and peasants. Their yellow hair is combed smooth down each side of their faces and hangs in long braids behind and they wear handkerchiefs over their heads. They are all dressed alike. There are no sleeves in the women’s long blue calico dresses but under them they wear white shirts with long white sleeves. The men have whiskered cheeks and long golden beards. They wear blue blouses that hang down long, to their knees almost, with belts around their waists. They were all very polite and smiling, seeming to try to say they were glad we came. They gave us another big pail of the fresh warm milk and Manly gave them a fire mat. One man seemed quite Americanized, Manly said to him slowly that the mat will not burn and he said that he understood. He may not believe it but if he tries it he will find out.

  When we were leaving a woman opened the front of her dress and took out a baking of cold biscuits from right against her bare skin and gave them to me. The man told me to put them in my shirt, but I carried them in Manly’s clean handkerchief instead. The man said it was hard for people to cook when traveling. They are very kind people. A pity to waste the biscuits but we could not eat them.

  The Russians have a great huge dog. He was higher than my belt as we stood together and his great head looked like a wolf’s, only larger. His ears were trimmed to make them like a wolf’s ears and he was a bright brown all over. He was very loving, he rubbed against Rose and me and we put our arms around his big neck. There was a little puppy just like him and Manly tried to buy it but they would not sell.

  They have splendid barns and great corn cribs and a windmill. Their land runs along the river. Each man works his own land but all of them together own all the stock in common.

  We have spent a most pleasant Sunday and we are rested. Paul climbed onto Little Pet’s back and the colt did not care, he was gentle.

  July 23

  We started at 8. Hated to leave our camping place, it seems quite like home. We crossed the James River and in 20 minutes we reached the top of the bluffs on the other side. We all stopped and looked back at the scene and I wished for an artist’s hand or a poet’s brain or even to be able to tell in good plain prose how beautiful it was. If I had been the Indians I would have scalped more white folks before I ever would have left it.

  We could see the river winding down the valley, the water gleaming through the trees that grow on the bank. Beyond it the bluffs rose high and bare, browned and burned, above the lovely green of trees and grass and the shining water. On this side the bluffs again were gigantic brown waves tumbled and tossed about.

  On this side of the James we have passed fields of corn 8 feet high. There are cotton-wood hedges along the road, the trees 10 inches through and 35 or 40 feet tall. But it all seems burned and bare after our camping grounds by the river.

  10 o’clock. It is 101° in the shade in the wagon, and hardly a breath of air.

  At 11 o’clock, 9 miles from Yankton, we stopped at a windmill to water the horses. The man who owned the house told us he paid $5,000 for three 80’s, without a building.

  Not far from Yankton we crossed a bone-dry creek bed with the most desolate barren bluffs on each side. Covered with stones and the grass dry and brown, they looked like great drifts of sand that somehow had stopped drifting.

  We reached Yankton at 4 o’clock. Drove by the insane asylum. The buildings look nice and they stand in the middle of a large farm of acres and acres of corn and potatoes. Manly wanted to stop and go through the asylum but I could not bear to, so we did not. We passed by the Yankton College, the buildings are very nice.

  I am greatly disappointed in Yankton, it is a stick in the mud. We drove all over the town to find a little feed for the teams, went to the mill and the elevator and the feed stores, and finally found a couple of sacks of ground feed but not a bit of flax* in the whole town.

  ≡ Flaxseed was indispensable first aid to hurts and minor ills. A boiling-hot flaxseed poultice holds hotter heat longer than a bread-and-milk one, and usually it works better than layers of cold vinegar-and-brown-paper. R.W.L.

  There were no green vegetables, nor any figs nor dates in the grocery stores. It would be a blessing to Yankton if Carpenter would move down here, or if folks in Yankton would send to De Smet for what they need. They have a number of elevators, 2 or 3 mills, and 6 feed stores, but we carried the most of the feed away in two sacks.

  I got my revolver fixed, then we had to spend so much time hunting for feed all over town that Mr. Cooley got to the ferry first. Mrs. Cooley and Paul crossed the river, then the ferry came back and took Mr. Gooley over. It was leaving just as we drove down to the landing at 6 o’clock and while we were waiting for it to come back a bad-looking storm came up. It was not rain, only wind and dust.

  We had to face the river to keep the wagon’s back to the wind so that it would not be blown over. The wind lifted the hind wheels twice before Manly could get them roped down. The ferryman did not like to try to cross the river in the storm. He waited on the other side until the blow was over, and we were afraid he would not cross again that night. But he did.*

  ≡ When the rear wheels lifted as if the wagon were going end over end into the river, my father jumped out, leaving the reins in my mother’s hands. While she held and gentled the nervous horses, I craned around the edge of the side-curtain to see what my father was doing. He was driving a picket-pin into the ground, and tying a wheel to it with the picket rope. Behind us was a covered wagon, behind it another, and another. As far as I could see, covered wagons stood one beyond another in a long, long line. Behind them and over them, high over half the sky, a yellow wave of dust was curling and coming. My mother said to me, “That’s your last sight of Dakota.” R.W.L.

  Where we crossed the Missouri it is one mile wide, very nasty and muddy. I do not wonder that it is called The Big Muddy, and since I have seen the dust blowing into it I do not think it strange that it is muddy. The Missouri is nothing like as beautiful as the Jim.

  Pet made no fuss at all at the ferry, but drove onto it nicely, stood as quiet as could be, and calmly drove off it. Her colt Little Pet ran onto it loose and stood beside her as still as a mouse.

  About a mile from the river we camped in woods. Temperature 98°.

  July 24

  Mr. Gooley got up early and went fishing but did not get a bite. We were all tired from being up so late last
night, and did not get started until 9 o’clock. We had taken the wrong road, so we had to go back to the river and start again on the right one. For a little way we followed the river and could see down it, four or five miles across the water. It was a grand sight, though the scenery on the banks is nothing. What is it about water that always affects a person? I never see a great river or lake but I think how I would like to see a world made and watch it through all its changes.

  The banks of the Missouri are crumbling all the time and falling into the water. In one place the road had fallen in. There on the river flats before we reached the bluffs we saw 24 hay stacks at one time, and mowing had only begun. Four mowing machines were working. Hay is $9 a ton in Yankton.

  Well, we have come to the bluffs. On the side next the river they look as if they had been cut straight down with a knife. Grass has not grown on the face. All along the foot of it trees are growing, sheltered from the south wind. Plums, grapes, black currants and sweet clover grow wild on the bottom land. Sweet clover 8 feet high. And the first oak trees we have seen.

  We have been going over the bluffs, the most desolate bare hills I ever saw, without houses or fields or trees and hardly any grass. Manly said he would just as soon own the whole of Nebraska as not, if it were fenced. Judging from all he has ever seen of the state it might do for pasture if he did not keep much stock. So far Nebraska reminds me of Lydia Locket’s pocket, nothing in it, nothing on it, only the binding round it.

  We meet covered wagons going north. Manly talked to a couple of men traveling from Kansas to South Dakota. They said there is nothing in Kansas.

  The hens are laying yet. Temperature 110°.

  July 25

  We spent the night among the Nebraska hills, down in a hollow where they shut us in, and not a house in sight. This morning I like to look at the hills, there is something fascinating in their loneliness.

  We started at 7:35. It is a nice cool morn. Went through Hartington at 8:30. It is a nice town, I like it much better than Yankton though it is smaller. Passed through Coleridge at 12:30, not much of a place. The wind is blowing and the dust flying till we can hardly see. Talk about hard roads in Dakota, I never saw hard roads till now. The more I see of Nebraska the less I like it. We have been climbing over bluffs all day.

  Just south of Coleridge there are 22 families that are going to start for Missouri in about 6 weeks, though this country is very thinly settled. One man said he has lived here for 6 years and has not seen a good crop yet.

  We camped east of the town of Beldon one mile, but within sight of it, by a creek. Not so much as a bush to be seen. Manly did the chores so Mr. Gooley could go fishing. He caught 11 fish. Temperature 109°.

  The man living near where we camped is working for a man in Sioux City who owns 3,000 acres of land here, in a body. 500 acres of it are in pasture and 250 in meadow.

  July 26

  Mr. Cooley went fishing again this morning and caught 2. We were on the road at 8:40. There has been plenty of rain right here and crops are good, corn, wheat and oats. But three miles west they have nothing. Land is $25 an acre here.

  Met a load of emigrants at noon. They are going north. Thermometer 110° in shade.

  This afternoon we met a family of emigrants, man, woman and two children. They had been to Missouri and are coming back. They started from Moody County, Dakota, the 8th of May and went to Taney’County, Missouri. They stayed only 10 days and started back, have been on the road ever since. They would not live in Missouri if you gave them the whole of it. “Why, hardly any of the houses have windows in them, just holes, and lots of the women have never seen a railroad train nor an organ,” and the land is awful stony. They think of stopping in Cedar County, Nebraska.

  Crops are poor since noon, country about as dry as Dakota. Went through Winside about 4 o’clock. Roads are awfully hilly and Mr. Cooley wishes we had kept farther west and gone to Columbus instead of Schuyler.

  Crossed Humbug Creek and camped by the first house south. The people are Germans and very nice, they gave us milk. Humbug Creek and Winside are well named only they should have spelled it Windside. We have faced a hot hard wind all day.

  July 21

  Started at 8:15. We have gone through Cedar County and nearly through Wayne County, Nebraska. We cannot tell when we come to a county line as we could in Dakota, the roads pay no attention to section lines but wander up and down and around the hills.

  The soil in Wayne County is very fine and close, not exactly clay but clayey. The people here claim it is the best soil on earth to stand drought.

  Crossed the line into Stanton County at 9. There are large pastures and the grain fields are all fenced. A good many sleek cattle are in sight. Cornfields are 3 miles long and as far back as you can see. There are a few groves. Wind blows hard but cool this morning.

  At 10:20 we saw an orchard with apples.

  The hills are covered with corn as far as eye can see, acres and acres of corn. Lots of groves. Nearly all the people are Germans. One gave Manly two large apples off his trees. He has a large orchard and the trees hang full.

  Just passed a house where the man owns 540 acres of land and has 300 hogs.

  A little farther on, a farm of 500 acres. The owner had 450 hogs and only 50 bushels of old corn. He says if it does not rain within 24 hours the tassels on the new crop will dry and he will not harvest a kernel of corn. The corn looks nice to us but I suppose the farmers here know. Their wheat only sold for 32 cents last year and it is 32 cents now.

  We came into the Elkhorn valley at 1:45 and it is pretty, very level, with many groves and nice houses and natural timber along the river.

  An emigrant team is behind us and every minute I expect to hear the usual, Where did you come from? Where are you going? How are the crops up your way? This never – hardly ever – fails.

  Found an ear of corn 10 inches long, 7½ inches around.

  Arrived at Stanton at 3 p.m. It is a good looking town, large pretty buildings, clean big houses with trees. People mostly Germans. German signs on the stores and German texts on the churches. Wheat is going 16 to 20 bushels to the acre. Corn is killed by the hot wind. Yesterday it was 126° in the shade here in Stanton.

  Crossed the Elkhorn river on a bridge. A few miles farther on we camped by the side of the road in the shade of some trees. There was a gang of horse traders on the river and we did not want to camp near them.

  July 28

  We washed this morning, or rather Mrs. Cooley did out a washing and I washed 4 garments. I wash out the most of the clothes in a pail as they get dirty so I do not have washings. The neighbors sent us a pailful of delicious cold milk, out of the water where they keep it for the creamery.

  The washing had to dry, so we did not start to travel until after dinner. The roads are awful killers for the horses. We had gone about 3 miles when we missed Cooleys’ dog. Mr. Gooley wanted to go on but Mrs. Cooley would not. Finally it was decided that he would go back to look for her and the rest of us would go on.

  We took the ridge road, not to go up and down the hills, so we followed along the top of the ridge through acres and acres of corn fields. We could see nothing of Mr. Cooley when it was time to camp, but we camped by the side of the road on the prairie. There was good grass for the horses and a pump in a pasture, just through the fence.

  We got the horses watered and picketed out, when here came Mr. Cooley over a hill from the south. An old Bohemian had come out and would not let him cross a field where we had gone, so he had to go all around to come back to us. He had found the dog where we camped last night.

  The oats and wheat are good here and the corn does not look bad but of course it needs rain so people are blue and cross and stingy.

  There are wild strawberry plants here, and rattlesnakes.

  Sunday, July 29

  Cooked breakfast and bathed and lay around in the shade of the wagons. Temperature 96°. Rested all day and went to bed early.

  July 30


  Started at 8 and crossed the line into Colfax County twenty minutes later. Went through Leigh at 10 o’clock, a lively little town that has not outgrown country.

  Crops are still the same but roads are not so hilly.

  We camped on the bank of Shell Greek in the woods. A lovely place, even better than our camp on the Jim River. The children and Mrs. Cooley and I went wading. The bank was so steep that we had to steady each other down, and pull and push each other up. We paddled and played in the rippling cool water. Rose sat down in it, splash! We found two large live clams.

  July 31

  The wind blew terribly in the night. We were thankful for the shelter of the trees. It must have rained hard somewhere, for the creek raised 8 inches.

  Started at 9. We are following down the valley of the creek on a nice level road.

  Reached Schuyler at noon, all the way on the level road. Here we had to get the tires set, so we did not leave town till 3. I met an interesting woman. She drove up to the wagon in a buggy and began by asking if it isn’t hot to be traveling, I liked her and we talked a long time. Her husband owns a large farm north of Schuyler but they are going back to the West Indies in a few weeks. They are Canadians but her husband was in the West Indies when a boy and they have spent half their lives there. They thought they would like to live here but do not like it as well as they expected, so they will rent the farm again and she thinks they will stay in the West Indies when they get there. She said it is a monotonous life but very pleasant, the servants do all the work. She wanted to know all about Dakota and everything she said was sensible. She is an elderly lady, and I think Scotch.

  South of Schuyler the land is sandy, two miles to La Platte River. We crossed the Platte on a bridge half a mile long, humped in the middle so we went up and down hill on it. The river is full of sand bars that keep shifting.

  Half a mile beyond it we camped in a grove of willows. The Cooleys lingered in town and had not arrived when we camped. Manly and I hurried our supper and left Rose to watch the camp while we ‘hit the dust’ back to the river so I could go wading in daylight.