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

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  We received 3 letters at Fort Scott, 2 from home. A little way south of the city we camped beside the road.

  August 22

  A good start at 7:15 and this morning we are driving through pretty country. Crops look good. Oats are running 30 to 60 bushels to the acre, wheat from 10 to 30. All the wood you want can be had for the hauling and coal is delivered at the house for $1.25 a ton. Land is worth from $10 an acre up, unimproved, and $15 to $25 when well improved, 12 miles from Fort Scott.

  Exactly at 2:24¾ P.M. we crossed the line into Missouri. And the very first cornfield we saw beat even those Kansas cornfields.

  We met 7 emigrant wagons leaving Missouri. One family had a red bird, a mockingbird, and a lot of canaries in cages hung under the canvas in the wagon with them. We had quite a chat and heard the mockingbird sing. We camped by a house in the woods.

  August 23

  Started out at 7:30. The country looks nice this morning. At 9:35 we came to Pedro, a little town on one side of the railroad tracks, and just across the tracks on the other side is the town of Liberal. A man in Pedro told us that one of the finest countries in the world will be around Mansfield.

  In the late afternoon we went through Lamar, the nicest small city we have seen, 2,860 inhabitants. It is all so clean and fresh, all the streets set out to shade trees.

  We camped among oak trees, not far from a camp of emigrants from Kentucky. Beautiful sturdy oak trees on both sides of the road.

  August 24

  On the road bright and early, 7:20. Weather cool and cloudy, looks like rain. Went through Canova in the morning. It is a little place. At noon we were going through Golden City, a nicer little place. The country looks good, but judging from weeds in the gardens and fields, the people are shiftless. This is a land of many springs and clear brooks. Some of the earth is yellow and some is red. The road is stony often.

  Went through another little town, Lockwood, at 4 o’clock, and camped by a swift-running little creek of the clearest water. It is most delicious water to drink, cold, with a cool, snappy flavor.

  Except in the towns, we have seen only one schoolhouse so far in Missouri.

  We drove in the rain this afternoon, for the first time since we left Dakota. It was a good steady pouring rain, but we kept dry in the wagon and the rain stopped before camping time.

  August 25

  Left camp at 7:35. It rained again in the night and the road was muddy but after a few miles we came to country where it did not rain so the road was dry. The uplands are stony but there are good bottomland farms. Much timber is in sight, oaks, hickories, walnuts, and there are lots of wild crabapples, plums and thorn apples.

  In South Greenfield two land agents came out and wanted us to stop here. One was C.C. Akin, the man who located Mr. Sherwin. He said Mr. Sherwin was here only a week ago, has just gone. Mr. Sherwin looked Wright County over thoroughly and came back to Cedar County and located here. But finally Mr. Akin said there is just as good land in Wright County as Mr. Sherwin bought.

  Well, we are in the Ozarks at last, just in the beginning of them, and they are beautiful. We passed along the foot of some hills and could look up their sides. The trees and rocks are lovely. Manly says we could almost live on the looks of them.

  We stopped for dinner just before we came to the prettiest part, by the side of a swiftly running stream, Turnback River. We forded it, through the shallow water all rippling and sparkling.

  There was another clear stream to cross before we came to Everton at 5 o’clock. Here we stopped to get the horses shod but there was not time to shoe them all today, so we camped by a creek in the edge of town for over Sunday.

  Sunday, August 26

  A day for writing, reading, sleeping. We let the children wade in the shallow creek, within our sight. I spent almost the whole time writing to the home folks about the country since Fort Scott and these hills and woods.

  August 21

  Out of camp at 7:10. We like this country. A man tried to get us to settle just across the road from him, said we could buy that 40 for $700. It was good land.

  We forded Little Sock River and came through Ash Grove, a lively little town noted for its lime kiln. Two new brick blocks are going up on Main Street.

  Camped 12 miles from Springfield. Manly was unhitching the team when a man with his wife and daughter in a covered wagon drove up and wanted to know where he could water his mules. They live 14 miles east of Springfield in Henderson County and were going to visit the woman’s brother in Ash Grove.

  After we had talked awhile they said they would like to camp by us if we could sell them a little meat to cook. They had not intended to camp and had brought nothing to eat. We let them have some meat and they used our camp stove, so we got quite well acquainted. They are good, friendly folks. Their name is Davis. After the chores were done they brought over a large watermelon and we called the Cooleys to come, and all of us ate the whole big melon. You can buy a 20lb watermelon here for 5 cents.

  August 28

  Left camp at 6:28. Good road from Ash Grove, all the way to Springfield, not hilly nor very stony. This is the Ozark plateau and the country looks much like prairie country though there are groves and timber always along the streams.

  Arrived in Springfield at 9:25. It is a thriving city with fine houses and four business blocks stand around a town square. The stores are well stocked and busy. Manly hitched the horses and we bought shoes for Rose and myself, a calico dress for me, and a new hat for Manly. It did not take much time and we drove right along through the city. We were out of it before noon. It has 21,850 inhabitants, and is the nicest city we have seen yet. It is simply grand.

  We could see two straight miles down Walnut street, a very little down grade, with large shade trees on each side, large handsome residences, and the pavement as smooth and clean as can be.

  Five miles east of Springfield is Jones Spring. The water is clear as glass, and it comes pouring out of a cave in a ledge of rock. At its mouth the cave is 4 feet high and 10 feet wide, and nobody knows how far back it goes. Manly and Mr. Cooley went quite a distance back into it and threw stones as far as they could throw them, and the stones fell plunk into water far back in the dark.

  The water pours out of the cave 14 inches deep and runs away over the stones among the trees, a lively little creek.

  We were told that 7 miles southeast of Jones spring a stream comes out of a cave so large that you can keep rowing a boat back into it for half a day.

  After crossing Pierson’s Creek we met, one day after another, 10 emigrant wagons leaving Missouri. We camped in the edge of Henderson, a little inland town, on the bank of a spring brook.

  August 29

  Left camp at 7:10. We are driving along a lively road through the woods, we are shaded by oak trees. The farther we go, the more we like this country. Parts of Nebraska and Kansas are well enough but Missouri is simply glorious. There Manly interrupted me to say, “This is beautiful country.”

  The road goes up hill and down, and it is rutted and dusty and stony but every turn of the wheels changes our view of the woods and the hills. The sky seems lower here, and it is the softest blue. The distances and the valleys are blue whenever you can see them. It is a drowsy country that makes you feel wide awake and alive but somehow contented.

  We went through a little station on the railroad and a few miles farther on we came to a fruit farm of 400 acres. A company owns it. There are 26,000 little young trees already set out in rows striping the curves of the land, and the whole 400 acres will be planted as soon as possible. Acres of strawberries and other small fruit are in bearing. We stopped to look our fill of the sight and Manly fell into conversation with some of the company’s men. They told him of a 40 he can buy for $400, all cleared and into grass except five acres of woods, and with a good ever-flowing spring, a comfortable log house and a barn.

  We drove through Seymour in the late afternoon. The Main Streets of towns here are built around open squar
es, with the hitching posts surrounding the square. In the office of the Seymour paper, the Enterprise, a girl was setting type. A man spoke to us, who had lived years in Dakota, near Sioux Falls, he has a brother living there now. He is farming near Seymour. He said the climate here can’t be beat, we never will want to leave these hills, but it will take us some time to get used to the stones.

  Oh no, we are not out of the world nor behind the times here in the Ozarks. Why, even the cows know ‘the latest’. Two of them feeding along the road were playing Ta-ra-ra Boom! de-ay! The little cow’s bell rang Ta-ra-ra, then the bigger cow’s bell clanged, Boom! de-ay. I said, “What is that tune they are playing?” and we listened. It was as plain as could be, tones and time and all, and so comical. We drove on singing Ta-ra-ra Boom! de-ay! along the road.

  We passed several springs and crossed some little brooks. The fences are snake fences of split logs and all along them, in the corners, fruit grows wild. There are masses of blackberries, and seedling peaches and plums and cherries, and luscious-looking fruits ripening in little trees that I don’t know,* a lavishness of fruit growing wild. It seems to be free for the taking.

  ≡ These were wild persimmons and pawpaws. R.W.L.

  We could not reach Mansfield today. Camped by a spring 10½ miles short of it. In no time at all Rose and I filled a quart pail with big juicy blackberries. They are growing wild in big patches in the woods, ripening and falling off and wasting.

  Six more emigrant wagons camped around the spring before dark. Seasoned oak wood, sawed, split and delivered and corded, brings $1 a cord here.

  August 30, 1894

  Hitched up and going at 7:10. The road is rough and rocky through the ravines but not so bad between them and there are trees all the way.

  We are passing through the Memphis fruit farms, 1,500 acres, part of the way on both sides of the road. It is a young orchard, rows upon rows of little trees, apple and peach, curving over the plowed hills.

  Some covered wagons came up behind us and we came up behind some ahead, all the teams going slowly, holding back down hill and pulling up hill. At 11:30 we came into Mansfield in a long line of 10 emigrant wagons.

  Mansfield is a good town of 300 or 400 inhabitants in a good central location where it should grow fast. The railroad runs on one side of the square and two stagecoach lines go from the depot, one south to the County seat of Douglas County, the other north to the County seat of Wright County. There is everything here already that one could want though we must do our worshipping without a Congregational church. There is a Methodist church and a Presbyterian. There is a good school. Around the Square, two general stores, two drug stores, the bank, a Boston Racket store, livery stable, blacksmith shop near. There are several nice large houses in big yards with trees. South of the tracks is as good as north of them; two or three big houses, and a flour mill is there by a mill pond.

  Camped in the woods in the western edge of town and this afternoon Manly looked over one place for sale but was not exactly suited.

  ∨ On the Way Home ∧

  3

  Here my mother’s record ends. Fifty years later I began casually to speak of our camp in those vanished woods and she stopped the words in my mouth with a fierce, “I don’t want to think of it!”

  I do not remember how many days my father spent hunting for land that the secret hundred dollar bill would buy. Every morning he rode away with some land agent to limp up and down the hills and to come back at evening, nothing found yet.

  Paul and George and I were joyous. After the long boredom of so many dull days that we hardly remembered De Smet, now every day was Sunday without Sunday’s clean clothes and staid behavior. The camp was a Sunday camp; the Cooleys’ wagons on one side, ours on the other; in the grove between them the table and chairs were set and the hammock hung in the shade. The camp stove stood a little way apart over cooling ashes. Farther away the horses were tied under the trees, and behind the wagons were screened places for our Saturday baths.

  We must stay within sight or at least within hearing if our mothers called us, but as soon as morning tasks were done we were free to play in the woods. All day we climbed trees, picked berries, ate unripe walnuts and hazelnuts, cracked between two stones. We startled rabbits that we must not chase far; we watched squirrels and birds, beetles and anthills. The hot air was full of good smells of rotting logs, dusty weeds, damp underneaths of mats of last year’s oakleaves. Dandelion stems curled bitter on my tongue’s tip and the green curls wilted over my ears.

  Sharp flat stones were thick underfoot; we stubbed our toes on them and all our big toes were wrapped in rags. Stone-bruises on our summer-callused heels didn’t stop our running. We found toadstools and mosses like teeny-tiniest forests, flat greenish-gray lichen on rocks, little perfect skins of locusts, empty, thin and brittle, clinging with tiny claws to the bark of trees.

  We picked up strange stones. When I showed my father a thin triangular one, wavy all over and sharp-pointed, he said it was an Indian arrowhead. We collected dozens of them and Paul found a stone axhead.

  One day I had to stay in camp with Mrs. Cooley, I must mind her and not go out of her sight. My father had found a place, my mother was going with him to see it, and they wanted no worry about me while they were gone. There never had been such a long morning. I was embarrassed and so was Mrs. Cooley. When at last I saw the team coming, my father and mother coming back, I felt like exploding; I could hardly be still and not speak until spoken to.

  My father was glowing and my mother shining. She never had talked so fast. Just what they wanted, she told Mrs. Cooley, so much, much more than they’d hoped for. A year-round spring of the best water you ever drank, a snug log house, in woods, on a hill, only a mile and a half from town so Rose could walk to school, and to cap all, just think! four hundred young apple trees, heeled in, all ready to set out when the land was cleared. They’d bought it, as soon as dinner was over they were going to the bank to sign the papers. We were moving out that afternoon.

  When he was excited my father always held himself quiet and steady, moving and speaking with deliberation. Sometimes my quick mother flew out at him, but this day she was soft and warm. She left him eating at the camp table, told me to clear it and wash the dishes when he was through, and went into the screened place to get ready to meet the banker.

  I perched on a stump and watched her brush out her hair and braid it. She had beautiful hair, roan-brown, very fine and thick.

  Unbraided, it shimmered down to her heels; it was so long that when it was tightly braided she could sit on the braids. Usually it hung down her back in one wide braid but when she dressed up she must put up her hair and endure the headache.

  Now she wound the braid around and around into a big mass on the back of her head, and fastened it with her tortoise-shell pins. She fluffed her bangs into a soft little mat in front, watching her comb in the small looking glass fastened to a tree, and suddenly I realized that she was whistling; I remembered that I hadn’t heard her whistling lately.

  “Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad ends,” she’d say gaily. She was whistling always. She whistled like a bird whistling a tune, clear and soft, clear and sweet, trilling, chirping, or dropping notes one by one as a meadow lark drops them from the sky. I was pleased to hear her whistling again.

  Whistling, she buttoned up her new shoes with the buttonhook. She took off her calico dress and folded it neatly. Standing in her bleached muslin petticoats and corset cover trimmed with crocheted lace, she took her best dress, her black cloth wedding dress, out of the box in which it had traveled from Dakota. Whistling, Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me, she put on the skirt and smoothed the placket. I was sorry that the skirt hid her new shoes. She coaxed her arms into the basque’s tight sleeves and carefully buttoned all the glittery jet buttons up its front to her chin. With her gold pin she pinned the fold of ribbon, robin’s-egg blue, to the front of the stand-up collar. Then, the very last thing
, the climax: she pinned on her black sailor hat with the blue ribbon around the crown and the spray of wheat standing straight up at one side. The braids in back tilted the hat forward just a little; in front, the narrow brim rested on the mat of bangs.

  She looked lovely; she was beautiful. You could see my father think so, when she came out and he looked at her.

  She told him to hurry or they’d be late, but she spoke as if she were singing, not cross at all. He went into the screened place to change his shirt and comb his hair and mustache, and put on his new hat. To me my mother said that I could clear the table now, be sure to wash every dish while they were gone and, as usual, she told me to be careful not to break one. I never had broken a dish.

  I remember all this so clearly because of what happened. I had taken away the dishes and wiped the table. My mother put down on it her clean handkerchief and her little red cloth pocketbook with the mother-of-pearl sides; she was wearing her kid gloves. Carefully she brought the writing desk and set it on the table. She laid back its slanted upper half and lifted out the narrow wooden tray that held the pen and the inkwell.

  The hundred dollar bill was gone.

  There was a shock, like stepping in the dark on a top step that isn’t there. But it could not be true. It was true; the place in the desk was empty. Everything changed. In the tight strangeness my father and mother were not like them; I did not feel like me.

  They asked, Had I told someone? No. Had I never said anything to anyone, ever, about that money? No. Had I seen a stranger near the wagon when they were not there? No. Or in camp? No.

  My mother said it wasn’t possible; not the Cooleys. My father agreed, no, not them. It must be there. My mother had seen it last in Kansas.

  They took every sheet of writing paper out of the desk and shook it; they took each letter out of its envelope, unfolded it, looked into the empty envelope. They turned the desk upside down and shook it, the felt-covered inside lids flapping. My mother said they were losing their senses. Suddenly she thought, hoped, asked, Had I taken it myself, to play with?