Prairie Fires

by Caroline Fraser

      1.   LIW, LHBW (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932), p. 1.

      2.   Donald Zochert offers a similar description of the Big Woods (“it was a real place, dark and deep”) in the first Wilder biography, but does not address issues of Indian land ownership or population in the region. See Zochert, Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder (New York: Avon Books, 1976), p. 14.

      3.   “Big Woods” is enshrined in place names (the township of Big Woods in Marshall County, Minnesota) and appears on historical maps, in paintings (“In the Big Woods, Between Carver and Glencoe,” landscape watercolor by Edwin Whitefield, circa 1856–1859, collection of Minnesota Historical Society), and in period books. See, for example, The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, vol. 11, ed. G. Ripley and C. A. Dana (New York: D. Appleton, 1861), entry on “Minnesota,” p. 546.

      4.   Gwen Westerman and Bruce White, Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012), p. 13.

      5.   Ibid., p. 22. Westerman and White list seven bands, or “seven fires of the Dakota.”

      6.   See entry on “Oglala Sioux,” The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890: A Political, Social, and Military History, vol. 1, ed. Spencer C. Tucker (Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2011), p. 579.

      7.   See Westerman and White, pp. 85–111.

      8.   George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians, vol. 2 (New York: Dover, 1973), p. 3.

      9.   Ibid., p. 16.

    10.   Ibid., p. 156.

    11.   For a breakdown of Dakota population at the time, see Table 1.1, “Dakota Indian Bands, 1805–1846,” in They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups, ed. June Drenning Holmquist (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1981), p. 20.

    12.   Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862, ed. Gary Clayton Anderson and Alan R. Woolworth (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988), p. 12.

    13.   See Hiram M. Drache, The Day of the Bonanza: A History of Bonanza Farming in the Red River Valley of the North (Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1964), p. 17.

    14.   Westerman and White, p. 163; Historic Context Study of Minnesota Farms, 1820–1960, by Susan Granger and Scott Kelly, prepared for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, June 2005, section 3.5.

    15.   See Barbara T. Newcombe, “‘A Portion of the American People’: The Sioux Sign a Treaty in Washington in 1858,” Minnesota History, vol. 45, no. 3 (Fall 1976), p. 96.

    16.   See Jonathan H. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824–1854 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 36.

    17.   Ibid., p. 37. For an example of presidential opposition to the distribution of free land, see James Buchanan, Veto Message, June 22, 1860.

    18.   Abraham Lincoln, “Sixth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Quincy, Illinois,” October 13, 1858, in Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1832–1858 (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 740.

    19.   Abraham Lincoln, “Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio,” Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1859–1865 (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 203. Two printed versions of the speech exist; this follows the text from the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, February 13, 1861.

    20.   Beginning with the signing of the act, some 75,000 would enter Minnesota over the next few years. See “Homestead Act: May 20, 1862,” in “U.S.-Dakota War of 1862: Timeline,” Minnesota Historical Society: http://www.usdakotawar.org/timeline.

    21.   Among those who warned Lincoln about the perils of Indian poverty and agency corruption in Minnesota were George E. H. Day, an attorney and special commissioner assigned to investigate the problem, and the Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, Henry Benjamin Whipple. See David A. Nichols, Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978; 2000), pp. 70–74.

    22.   Display panel, “Milford, Summer 1862,” in “Never Shall I Forget: Brown County and the U.S.-Dakota War,” Brown County Historical Society, New Ulm, Minnesota.

    23.   Henry David Thoreau, The Journal: 1837–1861, edited by Damion Searls (New York: New York Review Books, 2009), p. 661.

    24.   Ibid.

    25.   The Upper Sioux Agency was known to Indians as Yellow Medicine Agency, the Lower as Redwood Agency. The two sets of names are used interchangeably in many historic accounts.

    26.   Ibid., p. 662.

    27.   Ibid., p. 372.

    28.   Ibid., p. 662.

    29.   Minnie Buce Carrigan, Captured by the Indians: Reminiscences of Pioneer Life in Minnesota (Buffalo Lake: The Newsprint, 1912), pp. 9–10.

    30.   Sarah F. Wakefield, “Six Weeks in the Sioux Teepees,” in Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives, edited by Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola (New York: Penguin, 1998), p. 250.

    31.   See Scott W. Berg, 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier’s End (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2013), p. 26.

    32.   Ibid., p. 28.

    33.   Ibid., p. 29.

    34.   Ibid.

    35.   Representative accounts of the war’s legendary opening act include that of Kenneth Carley, The Dakota War of 1862: Minnesota’s Other Civil War (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1961, rev. ed. 1976), pp. 7–9.

    36.   See Berg, p. 3.

    37.   This was Paul Mazakutemani, who had converted to Christianity; see ibid., p. 106.

    38.   Ibid., pp. 13–14. Berg’s source for Little Crow’s speech is the “literal transcription” in H. L. Gordon, The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1891), pp. 343–44. As Berg notes, “this version of Little Crow’s speech cannot be taken at face value,” but its resonance with the Ingallses’ subsequent plains experience makes it a crucial text in this discussion.

    39.   Berg, p. 9, quoting Gordon, The Feast of the Virgins.

    40.   Carrigan, p. 11.

    41.   Ibid., p. 12.

    42.   Ibid., p. 14.

    43.   Ibid., p. 16.

    44.   The account of Justina Boelter is taken from Augustus Lynch Mason, The Romance and Tragedy of Pioneer Life: A Popular Account of the Heroes and Adventurers Who, By Their Valor and War-Craft, Beat Back the Savages from the Borders of Civilization and Gave the American Forests to the Plow and Sickle (Cincinnati: Jones Brothers, 1883), pp. 814, 817–18.

    45.   Documentary evidence of the Jedediah Hibbard Ingalls family includes the 1860 United States Federal Census for Hawk River and Vicinity, County of Renville, Minnesota, which enumerates “Dedediah Ingalls” and his four children, Elizabeth J., Amanda, Melvina, and Geo. W. See also the Will and Guardianship Papers filed in the Estate of J. Hibbard Ingalls in the Probate Court of Nicollet County, October 23, 1863, Probate Case Files, No. 74-122.

    46.   The encounter of Elizabeth (known as Jenny) and Amanda Ingalls with Cut Nose is described in “Samuel J. Brown’s Recollections,” in Through Dakota Eyes, pp. 75–76. Modern accounts have been compiled by Rochelle Sjolseth, a great-granddaughter of George Washington Ingalls: “Blood Relatives on Both Sides,” The U.S. Dakota War of 1862, Minnesota Historical Society: http://www.usdakotawar.org/stories/share-your-story/2763; and “George Washington Ingalls,” http://www.dakotavictims1862.com/descendants-stories-of/descendants-stories-of/george-washington-ingalls.pdf.

    47.   See, for example, “A Wisconsin Boy Rescued from Captivity,�
� Semi-Weekly Wisconsin (Milwaukee), July 3, 1863, p. 2; Harriet E. Bishop McConkey, Dakota War Whoop: or, Indian Massacres and War in Minnesota, of 1862–’3, rev. ed. (St. Paul: Wm. J. Moses’ Press, 1864), pp. 349–50.

    48.   At the time, historians were confident that all Ingallses in the U.S. were descendants of Edmund Ingalls, an Englishman who arrived in Massachusetts in 1628. See, for example, the entry on George A. Ingalls (1820–1885), Magazine of Western History, vol. 14 (May 1891–October 1891), p. 511: “It is said that all who bear the family name of Ingalls, in America, are descended from Edmund Ingalls.” According to a much-reproduced chart of the “Posterity of Edmund Ingalls,” Charles Ingalls was a ninth-generation descendant; see William Anderson, The Pepin Story of the Ingalls Family (Pepin, MN: Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, 1981), unpaginated.

    49.   Display panel, “The War Begins,” in “Never Shall I Forget: Brown County and the U.S.-Dakota War,” Brown County Historical Society, New Ulm, Minnesota. Quotation attributed to Samuel Brown, Yellow Medicine Agency.

    50.   Charles E. Flandrau, The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier (St. Paul: E. W. Porter, 1900), p. 157.

    51.   Carley, p. 21.

    52.   Ibid., pp. 40–41.

    53.   Curtis Dahlin, Victims of the Dakota Uprising: Killed, Wounded, and Captured (Roseville, MN: Curtis Dahlin, 2012), pp. 199–200.

    54.   Carley, p. 24.

    55.   The full text of Ramsey’s speech, addressed to a special session of the Minnesota legislature on September 9, 1862, is held by the Minnesota Historical Society Manuscript Collection in the “Alexander Ramsey and family personal papers and governor’s records, 1829–1965.” Scans of the document can be seen online at usdakotawar.org.

    56.   The first governor of California, Peter Burnett, called for Indian extermination; see his State of the State address, January 6, 1851. In the first days of the 1862 war, John G. Nicolay, Lincoln’s private secretary, proposed mass killing to the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton: “As against the Sioux, it must be a war of extermination.” See Berg, p. 97.

    57.   Thomas J. Galbraith, “Northern Superintendency,” in Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Year 1863 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1864), p. 294.

    58.   See Berg, p. 225.

    59.   A drawing by W. H. Childs appeared in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 24, 1863, based on a hand-colored lithograph, “Execution of the 38 Dakota at Mankato, Minnesota, December 26, 1862,” in the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society.

    60.   See Berg, pp. 194–95.

    61.   See Westerman and White, p. 201. See also Robert J. Werner, “Dakota Diaspora After 1862,” Minnesota’s Heritage, no. 6 (July 2012), pp. 38–56.

    62.   This was accomplished through the Forfeiture Act of February 16, 1863. See Guy Gibbon, The Sioux: The Dakota and Lakota Nations (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), p. 111.

    63.   William E. Lass, “The Removal from Minnesota of the Sioux and Winnebago Indians,” Minnesota History (December 1963), pp. 353–64.

    64.   Curt Brown, “Little Crow’s Legacy,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis), April 24, 2015.

    65.   Massacres at Sand Creek, Washita River, and Wounded Knee targeted other tribes, but whites may not have noted the distinction. See, for example, the report of Major General S. R. Curtis to Headquarters, Department of Kansas, January 12, 1865, in the aftermath of Sand Creek: “the popular cry of settlers and soldiers on the frontier favors an indiscriminate slaughter, which is very difficult to restrain.… So it goes from Minnesota to Texas.”

    66.   For a definitive account of the origins of the proverb and its connections to the 1862 Dakota War, see Wolfgang Mieder, “‘The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian’: History and Meaning of a Proverbial Stereotype,” Journal of American Folklore, vol. 106, no. 419 (Winter 1993), pp. 38–60.

    67.   Gibbon, p. 111.

  1. MAIDEN ROCK

      1.   John F. Case, “Let’s Visit Mrs. Wilder,” interview with Laura Ingalls Wilder, Missouri Ruralist, February 20, 1918, p. 15. The fifth article in the Ruralist’s “Get Acquainted” series, this was reprinted in A Little House Sampler: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, ed. William Anderson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), p. 9.

      2.   Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, in Mark Twain: Mississippi Writings, ed. Guy Cardwell (New York: Library of America, 1982), p. 573.

      3.   Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, p. 143.

      4.   William Cullen Bryant memorialized the lake in Picturesque America (1874). For a full discussion of sources on the legend of Maiden Rock, see G. Hubert Smith, “The Winona Legend,” Minnesota History, vol. 13, no. 4 (December 1932), pp. 367–76.

      5.   LIW, LHBW in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, pp. 69–79.

      6.   LIW, undated fragment in A Little House Reader: A Collection of Writings by Laura Ingalls Wilder, ed. William Anderson (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 160.

      7.   LIW, THGY in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 2, p. 635.

      8.   LIW, Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, ed. Pamela Smith Hill (Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014), pp. 36–39. In Wilder’s text, she identifies the brothers as “James” and “George.” Lansford Whiting Ingalls (1812–1896) did have a brother James Ingalls (1798–1868), who was fourteen years older. Given their respective ages, the brothers who joined in the sledding caper may have been those closer in age to him, perhaps Aaron Ingalls (1802–1886), Benjamin Ingalls (1804–1894), or John W. Ingalls (1806–1892). The identity of “George” remains a mystery, since Lansford had no sibling by that name. See “Laura Ingalls Wilder Genealogy Chart,” compiled by Ellen Charbo, 1977. Malone Collection.

      9.   See Alice Morse Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), pp. 245–58. Morse notes that so-called blue laws, or Sunday laws, were most closely associated with New England, particularly Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; Samuel Ingalls, Charles Ingalls’s grandfather, was born in New Hampshire.

    10.   Charles Burleigh, The Genealogy and History of the Ingalls Family in America (Malden, MA: Geo. E. Dunbar, 1903), p. 17. My assessment of the difficulties faced by the first Ingalls is based on standard accounts of harsh conditions faced by early colonial settlers in New England, who struggled with inadequate housing, poor soil, and severe weather. See, for example, William Babcock Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620–1789, vol. 1 (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1891), pp. 18, 89, 427, et cetera.

    11.   Edmund Ingalls drowned in March 1648, when he and his horse fell through the Saugus River bridge. Sources on his will include: Alonzo Lewis and James R. Newhall, History of Lynn, Essex County, Massachusetts (Boston: John L. Shorey, 1865), pp. 111–12; Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620–1789, vol. 1, p. 186; and “Will of Edmund Ingalls,” in The Essex Antiquarian, vol. 3–4 (Salem, MA, 1899), p. 120. Edmund Ingalls’s estate was appraised at 135 pounds, but according to experts, the value of colonial currency cannot be accurately converted or evaluated (see http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/Summer02/money2.cfm). Compared to other prominent men of the time, however, Ingalls’s estate contained relatively small plots of land, the largest, of sixty acres, valued at 50 or 60 pounds. By comparison, John Endecott, who led the Salem expedition and died two years before Ingalls, left more substantial farms, one consisting of several hundred acres, and a quarter of Block Island, yet his biographer considered him “more or less land-poor.” If Endecott was poor, Edmund Ingalls was poorer still. See Lawrence Shaw Mayo, John Endecott: A Biograph
y (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 282.

    12.   See Philip Alexander Bruce, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Material Condition of the People, Based upon Original and Contemporaneous Records, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1896), p. 333.

    13.   Mark Fiege, The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012), pp. 50–51.

    14.   Samuel Ingalls’s birthday, July 11, 1770, is occasionally given as 1771, but a birth certificate, produced in 1906, has surfaced bearing this date. Burleigh, Genealogy and History of the Ingalls Family, provides no birthdate, p. 93.

    15.   Thomas Jefferson, “Query XIX,” in Notes on the State of Virginia (Richmond, VA: J. W. Randolph, 1853), p. 176.

    16.   Lacking a local assembly, Congregationalists numbered among the founders of the Presbyterian Church in Cuba, New York, records of which date to 1827. Ingallses were not among its early members, according to Reverend John Woodring, current curator of those records. The only occurrence of the name is of a Mrs. Fred Ingalls, a church member in 1899.