118. See Reader, pp. 10–18.
119. PG, pp. 141–42; note my correction of punctuation.
120. PG, p. 142.
121. Grace Ingalls Dow to Aubrey Sherwood, October 20, 1939, reprinted in “Two Readers Recall Earliest Issues; Sisters Revive Memories in Reading Diary,” De Smet News, November 9, 1939.
122. In her novel By the Shores of Silver Lake, Wilder suggests that her father asked her to “see” for Mary (p. 17), but this is not spelled out in Wilder’s letters, essays, or memoir.
123. LIW to RWL, undated fragment, 1937. This letter, of which only p. 5 appears to exist, recounts the circumstances behind Docia Forbes’s first marriage, to Augustin Eugene Waldvogel; Lena and Eugene were his children. Wilder remarks of the scandal, “Oh yes! There are skeletons in our family closet.” For more, see LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 2, no. 6.21, p. 832.
124. PG, p. 145.
125. Ibid., p. 145.
126. Ibid., p. 153.
4. GOD HATES A COWARD
1. Fite, p. 100.
2. Annie D. Tallent, The Black Hills; or, The Last Hunting Ground of the Dakotahs (St. Louis: Nixon-Jones Printing, 1899), p. 39. Tallent, the sole woman in the Gordon Party, lists Thomas Quiner as a member on p. 24 but does not mention him again.
3. George Kingsbury, The History of Dakota Territory, vol. 1 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1915), p. 152.
4. George N. Lamphere, “History of Wheat Raising in the Red River Valley,” in History of Red River Valley: Past and Present, vol. 1 (Chicago: C. F. Cooper, 1909), p. 218.
5. Kingsbury, p. 344.
6. See Candace Savage, Prairie: A Natural History (Vancouver, BC: Greystone Books, 2004), p. 72.
7. See ibid.: “Over the Great Plains as a whole, precipitation is more variable than it is almost anywhere else on the continent.… Only ‘normal’ values were truly abnormal.”
8. Thomas Jefferson, An Account of Louisiana, Laid Before Congress by Direction of the President of the United States of America, November 14, 1803 (Providence: Heaton & Williams, [1803]), p. 6.
9. See separate entries of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, May 26, 1805, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, ed. Frank Bergon (New York: Penguin, 1989), p. 139. See also Major Z. M. Pike, Appendix to Part II, An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi (Philadelphia: C. & A. Conrad, 1810), p. 8.
10. Gail Geo. Homes, The Chiefs of Council Bluffs: Five Leaders of the Missouri Valley Tribes (Charleston: The History Press, 2012), p. 15.
11. Donald Worster, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 349. See also Drache, p. 41.
12. See Charles A. Schott, “Rain Chart of the United States,” from J. W. Powell, Report on the Arid Lands of the United States, 1878.
13. Worster, A River, p. 366.
14. Ibid., p. 350.
15. Fite, p. 95.
16. Worster, A River, p. 352.
17. John Wesley Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, 2nd ed. (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1879), p. vii.
18. Fite, p. 82.
19. J. H. Sheppard, “History of Agriculture in the Red River Valley,” in History of the Red River Valley: Past and Present, vol. 1 (Chicago: C. F. Cooper, 1909), p. 194.
20. Fite, p. 82.
21. Kevin Burkman, “John Wesley Powell and the Arid Empire of the American West,” Bloustein Review, May 16, 2014 (http://blousteinreview.rutgers.edu/john-wesley-powell-arid-empire-of-the-american-west/).
22. Fite, p. 96.
23. Drache, p. 42.
24. Kenneth M. Hammer, “Come to God’s Country: Promotional Efforts in Dakota Territory, 1861–1889,” South Dakota History, vol. 10, no. 4 (Winter 2000), p. 295.
25. Fite, p. 96.
26. Hammer, “Come to God’s Country,” p. 292.
27. Fite, p. 97.
28. See White, Railroaded, p. 487. The presidents were Sidney Dillon and Charles Francis Adams; the USGS employee was Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden.
29. See Powell, Report, 2nd ed., pp. 70–71.
30. Chicago & North Western Railway poster, National Park Service website.
31. H. Roger Grant, The North Western: A History of the Chicago & North Western Railway System (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), p. 41.
32. Fite, pp. 98–99.
33. Ibid., p. 100.
34. James F. Hamburg, “Railroads and the Settlement of South Dakota during the Great Dakota Boom,” South Dakota History, vol. 5, no. 2 (1975), pp. 165, 168.
35. PG, p. 158.
36. Dick, pp. 388–89.
37. LIW to RWL, undated letter from early 1937; see SL LIW, pp. 115–16.
38. PG, p. 160.
39. Ibid., p. 165.
40. Ibid., p. 172.
41. Ibid., p. 174. See also, LIW to RWL, February 5, 1937.
42. PG, p. 178.
43. In addition to the account of Charles Ingalls cited below, see Carrie Ingalls Swanzey to Mr. Mallery, April 11, 1930. De Smet Collection. Caroline Ingalls also wrote a historical note describing Silver Lake on the back of a 1914 postcard; see Aubrey Sherwood, “I Remember Silver Lake,” The Best of the Lore (De Smet: Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, 2007), pp. 29–30.
44. Charles Ingalls, “The Settlement of De Smet,” reprinted under a different title in Reader, pp. 3–4.
45. PG, p. 181.
46. Ibid., see p. 187n87.
47. Ibid. See also, “Swindling at the Agencies,” New York Times, August 15, 1878.
48. PG, p. 192.
49. Ibid., p. 181.
50. See ibid., p. 178n67; see also LIW to RWL, undated early 1938 draft, beginning “Silver Lake / Laura was impatient on the train.” See SL LIW, p. 156.
51. Charles Ingalls, “The Settlement of De Smet.”
52. Letter signed “C.S.I.,” Brookings County Press, February 2, 1880. In 2014, the Pioneer Girl Project of the South Dakota Historical Society Press discovered this letter; the initials of the signature are believed to be a typographical error for “C.P.I.” or “C. P. Ingalls,” as he often signed himself. See Nancy Tystad Koupal, “Rare Charles Ingalls Letter Discovered,” blog post, Pioneer Girl Project, August 5, 2014. https://pioneergirlproject.org/2014/08/05/rare-charles-ingalls-letter-discovered/.
53. See PG, p. 189n94; a plat map of De Smet appears on p. 190.
54. Ibid., p. 191.
55. See Nancy S. Cleaveland, “History of the Ingalls Building in De Smet,” and Richard B. Kurz Jr., “How the Store Was Recreated,” in Pa Ingalls’ Store (self-published scale model, 2013).
56. Pierre-Jean De Smet, “Observations upon America,” in Life, Letters and Travels of Father De Smet among the North American Indians, vol. 4, ed. Hiram Martin Chittenden and Alfred Talbot Richardson, chap. 6, p. 1430.
57. “First Letter of Father Christian Hoeken to Father De Smet, Sioux Country, Fort Vermilion, Dec. 11, 1850,” in ibid., chap. 2, p. 1251.
58. PG, p. 194.
59. No exact date can be supplied for this photograph, and there has been speculation about whether it was taken before Mary’s illness or fol
lowing it.
60. PG, p. 198.
61. Ibid., p. 201.
62. George Kingsbury, The History of Dakota Territory, vol. 2 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1915), p. 1148.
63. “Fall Blizzard 42 Years Ago Began ‘Winter of the Big Snow,’” Milwaukee Journal, October 15, 1922. Wisconsin Historical Society.
64. PG, p. 203; see also Barbara E. Boustead, “The Hard Winter of 1880–1881: Climatological Context and Communication via a Laura Ingalls Wilder Narrative,” doctoral dissertation, University of Nebraska, 2014, p. 127.
65. See PG, p. 204n8, and Nancy S. Cleaveland, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Education in Kingsbury County, Dakota Territory: 1880–1885 (De Smet: Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, 2015), p. 5. See also The Revised Codes for the Territory of Dakota, A.D. 1877, ed. Geo H. Hand, Secretary of Dakota, Chapter 24, section 44 (Yankton: Bowen & Kingsbury, 1877), p. 91; chapter 40, section 62, p. 209.
66. See PG, p. 204n9, pp. 204–205n10; p. 207n18.
67. LIW to RWL, March 7, 1938.
68. PG, pp. 203, 207.
69. Ibid., p. 207.
70. LIW to RWL, March 7, 1938.
71. See PG, p. 209.
72. Ibid., p. 210.
73. Ibid.
74. See Dick, pp. 258–59.
75. Ibid., p. 259.
76. PG, p. 215.
77. Ibid., p. 213.
78. Ibid., p. 220.
79. “Kolapoor Mission, India: Summary of Work Done,” in Royal Gould Wilder papers. Malone Collection.
80. See LIW, “Speech at the Book Fair, Detroit, Michigan, October 16, 1937,” The Little House Books, vol. 1, p. 587. Genealogical sources have not yet turned up additional uses of the name “Almanzo” in the Wilder family record: See Rev. Moses H. Wilder, Book of the Wilders: A Contribution to the History of the Wilders (Brooklyn, NY: Edward O. Jenkins, 1878).
81. Other literary sources include tales of valor inspired by the eighteenth-century Battle of Almansa, named for a Spanish town, which gave rise to a popular ballad by the same name; see “The Battle of Almanza” in A Pedlar’s Pack of Ballads and Songs, collected by W. H. Logan (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1868), pp. 82–84. The introduction to the volume and the headnote indicate that the source of the poem was a broadside dated “somewhere about 1760.” Another potential source might be Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards, a Tragedy in The Works of John Dryden, Now First Collected In Eighteen Volumes, ed. Walter Scott, vol. 4 (London: William Miller, 1808), p. 1. Dryden’s Restoration tragedy was satirized for bombast but given new life by Scott’s reverent edition.
82. Edward Maturin, “Inez: A Tale of Grenada,” Ladies’ Companion and Literary Expositor: A Monthly Magazine, new series, vol. 1 (1844), p. 237. Maturin penned another serial containing the name “Almanzor”: see his “Alonzo and Zamora,” Ladies Companion, new series, vol. 1, pp. 87–88. These serials were reprinted in New York State newspapers: see, for example, The Corrector (Sag Harbor, NY), October 17, 1846, p. 1.
83. U.S. Census, Schedule 4, Production of Agriculture in Burke, in the County of Franklin, New York, July 23, 1860, p. 49.
84. An assumption derived from the description in Farmer Boy in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, pp. 204–205.
85. See LIW to RWL, March 23, 1937.
86. See AJW to RWL, March, 1937.
87. No birth certificate documented Almanzo Wilder’s date of birth, but three census records in a row document his year of birth as 1859. The U.S. Census, Schedule 1, Burke, Franklin County, New York, July 24, 1860, listed the child as one year old; the 1870 U.S. Census gave his age as eleven; the 1875 New York State Census gave his age as sixteen.
88. See LIW to RWL, undated letter, 1937 (probably March): “Manly was supposed to be 21 years old. To enter a homestead a man must be 21 or the head of a household … E.J. told later (she would) that he was only 18. Manly has never admitted it but as near as I can figure E.J. was right.”
89. Ruth A. Alexander, Introduction to A Wilder in the West: The Story of Eliza Jane Wilder, ed. William Anderson (privately printed: Anderson Publications, 1971; 1985), p. iii, citing Mary W. M. Hargreaves, “Women in the Agricultural Settlement of the Northern Plains,” Agricultural History, vol. 50, no. 1 (January 1976), p. 182.
90. Eliza Jane Wilder left a lengthy account of her Dakota homesteading experience, apparently intended to be filed with claim paperwork, addressed to the “Department of the Interior.” It is reprinted in A Wilder in the West, p. 8.
91. See letter from AJW to RWL, March 20, 1937.
92. Ibid.
93. See LIW to RWL, March 22?, 1937, letter beginning “Monday P.M.”
94. See LIW to RWL, March 20, 1937.
95. PG, p. 221.
96. Ibid., p. 223.
97. The New York Public Library American History Desk Reference (New York: Macmillan, 1997), p. 282.
98. White, It’s Your Misfortune, pp. 372–73.
99. “Populism in the Plains and Midwest,” Encyclopedia of Populism in America, pp. 528–29.
100. PG, p. 231.
101. Ibid., p. 237.
102. Ibid., p. 231.
103. James Woodress, Willa Cather: A Literary Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), p. 36.
104. Ibid.
105. PG, pp. 239–41.
106. Ibid., p. 241.
107. Ibid., p. 243.
108. See LIW to RWL, December 29, 1937, see attached sheets, in SL LIW, p. 142. The story of the goose is told first in Pioneer Girl, p. 189.
109. Wilder retold the goose story as a Thanksgiving parable; see Wilder, “Thanksgiving Time,” Missouri Ruralist, November 20, 1916, in LIW, Farm Journalist, pp. 90–91.
110. PG, p. 251.
111. Ibid., p. 243.
112. Ibid., p. 246.
113. Ibid., p. 248.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid., p. 247.
116. Anderson, A Wilder in the West, p. 17.
117. Ibid., p. 259.
118. Ibid., p. 285.
119. Ibid., p. 287.
120. Ibid.
121. Ibid., p. 288n34.
122. LIW, “Ambition,” in Reader, pp. 32–33. Original on display in Mansfield Collection.
123. LIW, “Do It with All Your Might,” in Reader, p. 42.
124. LIW, “The Difference,” in Reader, p. 39.
125. LIW, “My Sister Mary,” in Reader, p. 43.
126. Ibid., p. 36.
127. See PG, p. 260n81. Wilder would later claim to have begun teaching at fifteen, perhaps having initially misremembered the chronology. Notably, she would remain insistent on the error long after she must have realized the confusion. Having cast herself as a trailblazer, she valued that persona. Her first teaching certificate would be reproduced in Little Town on the Prairie with some telling revisions, including its date. She also gave herself higher marks in history and geography and omitted her results for orthography (70 out of 100).
128. See Michael Lesy, “1900,” in Wisconsin Death Trip (New York: Doubleday, 1973), unpaginated.
129. Hamlin Garland, “Up the Coolly,” in Main-Travelled Roads (New York: Harper & Row, 1899), p. 79.
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