Contents
Map
Chapter One
Log Cabin in the Woods
Chapter Two
Pioneering on Plum Creek
Chapter Three
Back-Trailers to Iowa
Chapter Four
Homesteading in Dakota
Chapter Five
Laura, Manly, and Rose
Chapter Six
Pioneering in the Ozarks
Chapter Seven
Writing in Orange-Covered Tablets
Chapter Eight
The Children’s Favorite
Afterword
About the Author and Illustrator
Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Map
Chapter One
Log Cabin in the Woods
AFTER SUPPER, when the sky grew dark and flames danced in the fireplace inside the little log cabin, Laura Ingalls would ask, “Pa, will you please play the fiddle?”
The jolly songs Pa played on his fiddle made Laura want to dance and sing. Mary, Laura’s older sister, loved Pa’s music too, and so did Ma, their quiet, gentle mother. While they all listened, their big bulldog, Jack, dozed in the doorway.
Too soon, Laura would hear the clock strike the hour of eight.
“Goodness, Charles,” Ma would say. “It is time these children were asleep.”
As Ma tucked the girls under the cozy quilts, Pa would play just one more song, his blue eyes twinkling.
Laura and her family lived during the pioneer days of America. This was a time when many Americans left the East to find new homes in the West. When Laura was growing up during the 1860s and early 1870s, there were no telephones or electric lights. Most people traveled by horse and wagon. Many families like Laura’s lived in log cabins. Pa had built their cabin in the big woods of Wisconsin, and it was the first home Laura remembered. Pa and Ma came there to live soon after their marriage in 1860. Mary was born in the log cabin in the woods in 1865, the year the Civil War ended. Laura was born there two years later, on February 7, 1867.
By 1868, Pa and Ma had decided to leave the cabin in the woods in search of a new home. The Wisconsin woods were filling up with new settlers, and as hunting and trapping increased, wild animals became scarce. Pa knew that west of the Mississippi River lay vast stretches of open prairie, and that was where he wanted to go.
Pa sang a song with his fiddle that went ‘‘Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm.” Laura knew her uncles Henry and Tom and Peter and George, but she did not know an Uncle Sam. Pa told Laura that Uncle Sam was really the United States government. The government had so much land to spare that it would give Pa a farm just for settling on the land. Pa said this was called homesteading.
The family traveled by covered wagon across Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and finally into Kansas. After many weeks of travel, they drove through the frontier town of Independence and continued on for a few more miles until Pa decided to stop. There was nothing around them except for the sea of tall prairie grass waving in the wind and a big blue bowl of sky overhead.
The family’s first priority was to build a house. Pa cut trees from creek banks nearby and built a one-room log cabin. Then he built a stable for the horses. Next he plowed up the prairie land and planted crops and a garden, and he dug a well for fresh water.
There were only a few settlers living near the Ingalls cabin. Most of the neighbors were Osage Indians. They lived in big camps because this was their territory. The government had moved them to Kansas many years before, when pioneers crowded their hunting grounds in Missouri. Osage tribesmen rode their ponies across the prairie and sometimes stopped at the cabin. They always seemed hungry and welcomed the corn bread Ma gave them.
On a hot day in August, Pa took Laura and Mary on a long walk across the prairie. Jack followed them. Laura was just three and a half, but she never forgot that day. The Indians were away hunting, and Pa wanted to show Laura and Mary their empty camp. For part of the walk across the prairie, Laura rode on Jack’s broad back. At the camp they saw holes in the ground where tent poles had been and black spots where campfires had burned. In the dust Laura and Mary spied colored beads. They hunted for those left-behind beads until each had a handful.
When they arrived home, there was a surprise better than beads. A neighbor woman had come over to visit with Ma before they left, and now there was a third person in the cabin—a tiny newborn baby wrapped in a quilt. Laura looked at the little red-faced baby who snuggled next to Ma. Ma told Mary and Laura that this was their new sister, Caroline, whom they would call Carrie. In the family Bible, Ma wrote Carrie’s birthdate: August 3, 1870.
Soon after baby Carrie was born, the prairie became less peaceful. Laura heard Indian war cries during the night. The Osages were unhappy that people like the Ingallses had settled on their land. The Osages had agreed to sell their land, but the American government in Washington had not yet paid them for their territory. Night after night, the Indians chanted in their camps and debated what to do. Their angry cries floated across the prairie and frightened Laura, even though Pa was nearby and Jack guarded the cabin door.
When a treaty with the Indians was finally settled, the Osage tribe left the prairie. Laura watched with Ma and Pa and Mary as a long line of Osage men, women, and children on foot and on horseback moved to another reservation farther west.
Not long afterward, Pa and Ma received a letter from Wisconsin. The man who had bought their farm could not pay and wanted Pa to take it back. Even though the prairie was now peaceful, Pa and Ma decided to leave. They traveled all the way back home to Wisconsin, to the house where Mary and Laura had been born. Although Laura was only four years old, she never forgot Kansas, and Pa and Ma and Mary always told her stories of their first travels.
Back in Wisconsin, the cabin was shaded by tall trees instead of wide, open prairie skies. When Laura looked out the window, she saw more trees, leading to the deep forest. Inside the house were familiar things that had traveled back with them from Kansas: Pa’s fiddle, the chiming clock, the colorful quilts, and Ma’s precious little china figure, a shepherdess.
In the big woods Pa had many jobs to do each day. During the winter, when drifts of snow filled the silent forest, Pa left the warm house to hunt and check his traps. He brought home deer meat and sometimes bear meat. The animals he trapped were valuable for their silky furs. Pa collected them all winter. Then he traded them at the store in Pepin, seven miles away. It was the town closest to the Ingalls cabin.
Laura missed Pa terribly when he made the long trip to Pepin, but she was excited when he returned, bringing things they could not produce on their farm, such as sugar, salt, and spices. He also brought kerosene for the lamp, and sometimes there were lengths of cloth for Ma to make clothes. Laura and Mary always waited impatiently while Pa unpacked his purchases. They knew Pa would also have a treat for them, perhaps a stick of peppermint candy!
In the spring Pa cleared away trees surrounding the cabin. In the open spaces he raised wheat and corn. A garden provided vegetables and fruits for the family. A cow and a calf lived in the log barn. Pa built a zigzag rail fence to protect everything from the wild animals that roamed the woods. In cold weather he chopped wood to feed the stove and the fireplace.
While Pa worked outside, Ma, Laura, and Mary were busy in the cabin. By the time Laura was five, she knew that each day had its own job. She and Mary helped Ma wash clothes on Mondays. On Tuesdays Ma ironed, and Wednesdays were for sewing. On Thursdays they churned butter, and on Fridays they cleaned the cabin. Laura loved Saturdays because they were baking days, and the whole cabin was filled with the warm, yeasty smell of bread. And every da
y Ma cooked breakfast, dinner, and supper on the black iron cookstove.
On Sundays Mary and Laura dressed in their best clothes and wore hair ribbons in their braids. They sat quietly while Ma read Bible stories aloud. Sundays were God’s day, so everyone must be extra quiet and extra good. It seemed to Laura that Mary was always well behaved. She sat so ladylike while Laura felt like running and talking and playing with Jack. She felt better listening to Pa play his fiddle. On Sundays he played and sang songs like “Sweet Sabbath Home,” “Rock of Ages,” and “In the Sweet By and By.”
Ma expected Laura and Mary to learn to sew because all of their clothes were made at home. Mary made a whole patchwork quilt by the time she was five. Laura hated sewing. She thought it was slow and boring work, but she learned because Ma wanted her to. She was proud when she finished sewing her first sampler. On a length of gray cloth she sewed sample stitches with red yarn.
Laura was happiest when she was outdoors. Each day she brought in chips from the woodpile by the cabin door. The wood chips helped start fires in the stove and fireplace. Laura worked hard at her job, though she was very small. She was so short that Pa called her half-pint. He said she was like a pint of cider, half drunk up!
Down the twisting path from the cabin was a school. Ma told Laura and Mary that she had been a teacher and that schools were special places. Both Pa and Ma loved books, and many nights Laura fell asleep hearing Ma read. Ma said Laura would learn to read all by herself in school.
Laura and Mary walked to school together and carried their lunch in a dinner pail. At five years old, Laura was one of the youngest pupils in the school. She learned to print letters and discovered that letters made whole words. Laura was excited when she could read her first words:
The sun is up and it is day.
The dew is on the new-mown hay.
At recess time all the children in the school played together. Mary walked and talked quietly with the older girls, but Laura ran and jumped and climbed trees. When recess was over, Laura returned to the schoolroom with her dress rumpled and her brown braids flying.
After two years in the big woods, Pa and Ma discussed another move west. Pa said that Wisconsin was too crowded. New houses and farms were being built, and the forest was being cleared away. Pa missed the hunting and the big open prairies of Kansas.
Ma was happy living in their cabin in the woods, but she agreed with Pa. They could find a better farm in the West. Across the Mississippi River was a big state called Minnesota. In the western part of the state, the hills and valleys flattened out into prairie land. That was where Pa wanted to homestead.
Chapter Two
Pioneering on Plum Creek
ONE WINTER MORNING Laura woke up and saw that the cabin was nearly empty. Pa and Ma had packed most of their belongings in the canvas-topped wagon that waited in the yard. Quilts and bedding nearly filled the wagon, along with dishes and clothing and the clock. Pa’s fiddle rested between the quilts so that it would ride safely. Pa hooked his gun near the wagon seat for protection.
Pa had sold the cabin and the cow. Heavy furniture was left behind because the wagon could not be too heavy for the horses to pull on the long journey west. Pa hoisted Mary and Laura and baby Carrie into the wagon, and they nestled on a pile of quilts. Ma and Pa sat on the seat ahead while Jack walked behind the wagon.
Leaving their cabin behind for the second time, Pa drove the wagon through the wintry woods. They spent the first night of their trip west in a hotel. It was February 7, 1874, Laura’s seventh birthday. Pa and Ma surprised her with a book of poems called The Floweret.
Pa wanted to settle in the western part of Minnesota, but the weather was too cold to drive that far in the wagon. Pa found a cabin where they could wait until springtime. When warm weather came, their journey continued. Each day Pa drove the horses and wagon fifteen to twenty miles farther west. The land grew flatter the farther they traveled.
Each day as the sun set in the west, Pa stopped at a camping spot. Then there was work to do. Pa tended the tired horses and built a campfire. He hunted for fat prairie chickens and rabbits. Ma mixed batter for corn bread, and Mary and Laura opened the dish box. The supper table was a clean cloth spread on the grass.
As the big prairie sky grew dark with night, the campfire burned cheerily. It shed a warm glow on Laura and her family. Before bedtime Pa played the fiddle. Laura liked the going-somewhere songs Pa played.
“Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me,” Pa sang along with the fiddle. And this song seemed just right for pioneers going west:
In the starlight, in the starlight let us wander gay and free,
For there’s nothing in the daylight half so dear to you and me.
Laura and her sisters went to sleep in the wagon while Pa sang his songs over the wide, dark prairie of Minnesota.
One day as the covered wagon jolted along the road west, Laura saw something unusual. It was a locomotive, speeding across the prairie. It traveled much faster than Pa’s horses could pull the wagon. Pa told Laura it was a train and that it was the fastest way to travel. Laura never forgot the sight of that sleek train with plumes of black smoke pouring from the engine’s smokestack.
After stopping in a village called Walnut Grove, Pa drove the wagon out on the prairie and stopped, announcing they were home. Laura saw no house, no well for water, and no stable for the horses. There was just grass and sky and a creek bank with a stream of shining water called Plum Creek.
But there was a house, a house like none they had ever seen. It was a dugout, hollowed into the side of the creek bank. The floor was earth, and the front wall was built of lengths of grassy sod, piled up like bricks. Even the roof was made of strips of sod held up by wooden logs. Wild grasses and flowers grew on the outside walls. Trees were few on the prairie, and dugout houses were common. Laura liked the little sod house. At night the sound of the creek sang her to sleep, and in the morning it called her to the door.
While Pa plowed up the prairie for a wheat field, Laura, Mary, and Carrie helped Ma turn the dugout into a home. Laura fetched pails of water from the running spring. She and Mary played with little Carrie and made sure she did not fall into Plum Creek. When plums ripened, Laura and Mary picked them for Ma. Laura fished and brought strings of her catch to Ma to cook.
Plum Creek was Laura’s playground. She never tired of splashing, wading, and playing with Jack in the creek. Mary sometimes joined her, but often she was in the dugout with Ma or sewing quietly on a patchwork quilt.
After Pa had planted his wheat crop, he had time to build a better house for the family. He hauled lumber and doors and windows from Walnut Grove and built a beautiful, roomy home not far from the dugout on the prairie. It had a big room for cooking and eating. A smaller room was Pa and Ma’s bedroom. A ladder led to the attic, which was an airy bedroom for Laura and Mary. Carrie slept downstairs until she was old enough to climb the ladder to the attic safely.
After they were settled in the new house, Ma surprised Laura and Mary. She said they could walk to school in Walnut Grove since it was just a mile from Plum Creek.
Laura was shy on the first day she and Mary arrived at school. She knew none of the children, and she felt bashful. Being with Mary helped. Laura practiced writing on her shiny, new black slate. Words excited her—both reading them and writing them. And Laura quickly learned her classmates’ names and forgot about being shy.
School became great fun for Laura, especially at recess. Everyone wanted Laura to play games, even the boys. She could run as fast as anyone in the school and was popular with all of her classmates.
While Mary and Laura were at school, Pa worked hard along Plum Creek. He bought a cow and built a stable. Every day the wheat grew taller. Pa explained that folks in big cities like St. Paul needed wheat to make flour. When Pa’s crop was harvested, he could sell it in Walnut Grove. He told Laura that the wheat would make them rich.
But Pa had no chance to sell his wheat. One terrible day in the s
ummer of 1875, the sky darkened with strange clouds. Instead of rain, big green grasshoppers plopped on the ground. They ate Pa’s wheat field. They ate the garden. They ate the grass Pa’s cow needed. They ate everything that was green, leaving the Minnesota prairie brown and bare.
Laura had never seen Pa so disappointed. Even his blue eyes looked sad. The wheat crop had meant money in Pa’s pocket. It would have paid for the new house and bought shoes and dresses and food from the store. Without the crop, Pa needed to work for wages. There were no jobs nearby, so he had to leave home to search for work. Pa walked more than a hundred miles before he found a job harvesting wheat that the grasshoppers hadn’t eaten.
While Pa was gone, Laura worked harder than she ever had, helping Ma with Pa’s chores. Being busy didn’t keep them from missing Pa. The house on Plum Creek seemed empty without his jolly songs, his twinkling eyes, and his happy fiddle playing.
Letters came from Pa and helped to lift their spirits. Finally when harvesting was finished, he walked home to Plum Creek. He arrived with his pockets full of money, whistling “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.”
Chapter Three
Back-Trailers to Iowa
SOON AFTER PA CAME HOME, Laura and Mary returned from school to find that there was another Charles in the house! Charles Frederick was born on November 1, 1875. The family called the baby Freddie.
The next year was America’s centennial birthday, but no one in Walnut Grove was celebrating in 1876. The prairie was dry and brown, and farmers like Pa could grow no crops. Grasshoppers were still in abundance, searching for something to eat. One family saw them trying to eat the paint from their house. People abandoned their farms and homes. Laura said good-bye to many of her friends at school. And then Pa told them that they would leave too.
Laura didn’t like to think of her family leaving the West and returning to the East. People who did that were called back-trailers. Pa and Laura loved the West more than anyone in their family. But Pa had to earn money. The Steadmans, a Walnut Grove family, had bought a hotel in Burr Oak, Iowa. They needed help operating the hotel, so Pa and Ma agreed to move with their family to Burr Oak. They planned to live in the hotel and share the work.
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