Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy B. Wilson. I'm Holly Frying. This episode is
Speaker 1: coming out on Christmas Day. We looked around for something
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve to talk about. Past hosts have some great
Speaker 1: ones in the archive. There's Who Was Good King WinCE's Loss,
Speaker 1: There's the Christmas Truths. There's one on whether Oliver Cromwell
Speaker 1: really canceled Christmas, and there's even one on Saturnalia. And
Speaker 1: thanks to a request from listener Leanne and our earlier
Speaker 1: episode this week on Laura Angles and Wilder, this year's
Speaker 1: Christmas episode is about the terrible winter of eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: and eight one, which was immortalized in Laura Angles Wilder's
Speaker 1: The Long Winter. Laura, both real and fictional, was going
Speaker 1: on fourteen and the winter that she wrote about was
Speaker 1: a real event, and in the book, our first inkling
Speaker 1: of how bad this winter was going to be is
Speaker 1: while they're cutting hay in hot weather and Laura and
Speaker 1: Pap find a muskrat house that has very thick walls,
Speaker 1: and Paw says that this is a sign that a
Speaker 1: very hard winter is to come. They keep on harvesting
Speaker 1: the hay through September, and then they wake up on
Speaker 1: October one to a really heavy frost. They rush to
Speaker 1: get as much of the harvest in as they can,
Speaker 1: and Pa goes to hunt, but he can't find any
Speaker 1: geese or other birds anywhere. The first blizzard, that's the
Speaker 1: first blizzard hits in October and it lasts for three
Speaker 1: days and nights, which is bad enough to stop all
Speaker 1: the trains. And on the fourth day they find several
Speaker 1: cows outside so heartbreaking with their heads frozen to the
Speaker 1: ground thanks to the ice that was formed by their
Speaker 1: own breadth, with the moisture in their exhalation froze on them.
Speaker 1: Pap saves them. So it's hard. It's so very sad. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not long after that, in a depiction that is quite
Speaker 1: problematic by today's standards, a Native American man tells a
Speaker 1: bunch of folks at the store that a big winter
Speaker 1: is coming with seven months of blizzards. His his physical
Speaker 1: description and his use of language today people would say
Speaker 1: are pretty heavily stereotyped. The Ingalls family moves into town
Speaker 1: for the winter, where they hope they're going to have
Speaker 1: a little bit of an easier time a bit, and
Speaker 1: the blizzards do indeed continue for months and months, with
Speaker 1: various alarming adventures and misadventures to go along. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: frequent talk about whether the worst is over and when
Speaker 1: the trains might be running again. The cover copy of
Speaker 1: the book that Tracy used for a lot of this
Speaker 1: research is shockingly merry his children having a snowball fight
Speaker 1: on it. They're sledding. It looks like the jolliest, most
Speaker 1: enjoyable and delightful time ever, But we know that it
Speaker 1: was a little bit rougher than that. Um. In reality,
Speaker 1: it's really quite oppressive. Coal and food were becoming increasingly
Speaker 1: scarce as long as the train can't get through, and
Speaker 1: for a while, even when the weather is good in
Speaker 1: the story Uh and good enough for school, school is
Speaker 1: canceled because they don't have enough coal to heat the building.
Speaker 1: Some of the series most memorable tidbits happen during this
Speaker 1: hard winter, like having to break the ice and the
Speaker 1: water basin to wash their faces in the morning, carrying
Speaker 1: flat irons upstairs to warm the beds, mob bringing frozen
Speaker 1: washing in from the line, and Almonso, who was not
Speaker 1: yet known as manly trying to hide his seed wheats
Speaker 1: so that his brothers won't sell it to other people
Speaker 1: who run out of food. And as things get worse,
Speaker 1: the Engles family has to twist their hay into sticks
Speaker 1: to burn. When they have nothing else for fuel, Almonzo
Speaker 1: Wilder and Cap Garland make a heroic trip to buy
Speaker 1: wheat for families that will otherwise starve. There's also the
Speaker 1: thing that everyone mentioned to me when I said we
Speaker 1: were doing a little house related episode, and that is
Speaker 1: that they had to grind grain in the coffee mill
Speaker 1: all day to make enough flour for dinner. This would
Speaker 1: have made a flower that was not at all like
Speaker 1: bread flower. It was more really more like a coarse
Speaker 1: graham flower. And of course, as always happens during the
Speaker 1: Northern Hemisphere, Christmas happens during winter. A few days before Christmas,
Speaker 1: the mail actually comes through and everyone is overjoyed. The
Speaker 1: family gets a letter from a reverend saying they should
Speaker 1: expect a Christmas barrel from his church, and knowing that
Speaker 1: the odds are long on that barrel actually arriving by Christmas,
Speaker 1: they decided to save the church papers and youth companions
Speaker 1: that have all come in the mail to open on
Speaker 1: Christmas Day. The girls also start trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get some actual presents. Once they tally up
Speaker 1: all their money and go shopping, it turns out there's
Speaker 1: really nothing to be bought. They do find some suspenders
Speaker 1: for Pa, and Laura decides to give things she's already
Speaker 1: knitted and embroidered for herself to her mom and sisters.
Speaker 1: Grace also gets a toy, and Ma gets two cans
Speaker 1: of oysters, which were basically the last of the provisions
Speaker 1: at one of the stores she used to them to
Speaker 1: make oyster soup for lunch. Everyone including Laura, gets a
Speaker 1: piece of candy that Pa had brought ahead of time,
Speaker 1: but that's all that Laura gets. Christmas night, they run
Speaker 1: out of kerosene for the lamp, which means the rest
Speaker 1: of the winners is gonna be dark and sad. The
Speaker 1: blizzards go on and on and on, and it's made
Speaker 1: before a freight train brings anything new to the town.
Speaker 1: But on the upside, they get to have Christmas again,
Speaker 1: complete with turkey and cranberries, and Laura finally gets a present,
Speaker 1: which is beautiful yarns and embroidery silks uh and she
Speaker 1: can use them up to replace the things that she
Speaker 1: gave away to mom and her sister. I'm actually kind
Speaker 1: of conflicted about this, this present for Laura, because she
Speaker 1: wasn't the fondest of sewing. So in a way this
Speaker 1: present is work well, but she couldn't have bought those things.
Speaker 1: She is grateful for it and in one of the
Speaker 1: many examples of what we might consider good values. So
Speaker 1: it's a very sweet story in the end, and in
Speaker 1: spite of the danger and oppress in the middle. But
Speaker 1: how much of that blizzard after blizzard after blizzard, in
Speaker 1: this kind of sense of good gracious, when will the
Speaker 1: train come? How much of that is real? There's a
Speaker 1: short answer, spoiler. This really was a real weather event.
Speaker 1: People during the time called it the hard Winter, and
Speaker 1: even the starvation winter. Hard Winter was actually Laura's original
Speaker 1: title for the book, A nine four History of South
Speaker 1: Dakota reads, the Great Blizzard in the middle of October
Speaker 1: eighty was the initial performance of a of a winter
Speaker 1: unprecedented and never succeeded in severity in the history of
Speaker 1: Dakota or the Northwest. Heavy snows and severe storms came
Speaker 1: at frequent intervals, rendering train service unreliable and uncertain, hindering
Speaker 1: the removal of crops and the shipment into the country
Speaker 1: of supplies of fuel and groceries, and in some places
Speaker 1: even the telegraph wires were under snow, so complete isolation
Speaker 1: this meant, which is the town on where they were living,
Speaker 1: did not start keeping weather records until eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: but yanked in South Dakota, which is about a hundred
Speaker 1: and ten miles to the south did. Yankton reported lows
Speaker 1: as cold as thirty two below zero fahrenheit that winter,
Speaker 1: and even though there were days when the temperatures rose
Speaker 1: above freezing, they didn't last long enough for a real fall,
Speaker 1: and so what had melted within refreeze into ice. The
Speaker 1: rotary snow plow had also not yet been invented. This
Speaker 1: was a steam engine mounted plow used specifically for clearing
Speaker 1: railroad tracks. It was kind of like a vertically mounted
Speaker 1: fan carrying scoops that basically threw the snow out of
Speaker 1: the way as it moved. The first design came out
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty nine, but it wasn't really viable. Working
Speaker 1: version of it didn't exist until eighteen eighty three or
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four. Would have been really, really useful had
Speaker 1: that been a couple of years faster and without this
Speaker 1: piece of equipment to keep things going. Blowing snow quickly
Speaker 1: filled up the cuts through hills and mountains where the
Speaker 1: train tracks ran, packing into ice and making them completely impassable.
Speaker 1: Plus people's efforts to clear the tracks when the weather
Speaker 1: allowed for it just made things worse because they made
Speaker 1: these very high snow banks on either side, and that
Speaker 1: allowed for more drifting and packing as the wind blew.
Speaker 1: The train's inability to get through was really what made
Speaker 1: this winter so hard, and it brought the population of
Speaker 1: the area so perilously close to starvation. Because the blizzards
Speaker 1: had started so early, the harvest was already small, and
Speaker 1: no trains meant that there was no way to supplement
Speaker 1: that small amount of food people had been able to
Speaker 1: bring in from their crops, so the Angles and It's
Speaker 1: had even harvested pumpkins that were not ripe yet, just
Speaker 1: so that they could get them in before the freeze.
Speaker 1: There are archival pictures of trains stuck in the snow,
Speaker 1: with the snow on either side of them taller than
Speaker 1: the train cars. One of these was taken in March
Speaker 1: of one near sleep Beyond, Minnesota, which is the name
Speaker 1: Aim that fans of the series and the TV show
Speaker 1: will probably recognize, And this meant was also a really
Speaker 1: new settlement at this time, so a lot of people
Speaker 1: had not cleared as much land or enriched it for
Speaker 1: better crops yet, and a lot of the people also
Speaker 1: did not have firsthand experience of the weather there. This
Speaker 1: terrible weather condition also meant that animals were scarce beforehand,
Speaker 1: having having already taken shelter thanks to their instincts, and
Speaker 1: they became pretty much impossible to find as the winter
Speaker 1: wore on, and the book there's this one moment of
Speaker 1: hope when word spreads of an antelope herd near the town,
Speaker 1: and that hunt is unfortunately unsuccessful, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the very few large animal sightings the whole time in
Speaker 1: Laura's account. And as people ran out of fuel for burning,
Speaker 1: they broke down their outbuildings that they didn't crucially need,
Speaker 1: so fences and bridges too, along with the Ingles method
Speaker 1: of twisting haynd sticks, all went towards just keeping a
Speaker 1: fire going, yes, saying were having something to cook on.
Speaker 1: But communities and families banded together so that they could
Speaker 1: ensure that the what they did have was fairly distributed
Speaker 1: and to pull their resources as much as they were able.
Speaker 1: On February two, a blizzard started that lasted for nine days,
Speaker 1: and it dropped so much snow that some buildings were
Speaker 1: in snow up to their roofs. People had to tunnel
Speaker 1: through the snow in some locations, and people who were
Speaker 1: still on their homesteads had to tunnel to their barns
Speaker 1: and their other outbuildings. The one thaw started in April,
Speaker 1: started in October, and the thaw started in April the
Speaker 1: long time. Towards the end of the book, Laura references
Speaker 1: the Chinook winds, and these are winds that that go
Speaker 1: down the eastern slopes of the Rockies. They warm up
Speaker 1: along the way and then they move across the plains
Speaker 1: and they're responsible for bringing warmer weather and thawing to
Speaker 1: the area. This eventual faw actually led to severe flooding,
Speaker 1: and some of the was simply the sheer volume of
Speaker 1: water from the snow melt, and some was from ice
Speaker 1: jams in bends and narrow places in the rivers, and
Speaker 1: several towns actually flooded and the course of the Missouri
Speaker 1: River shifted as a consequence. Some of the records that
Speaker 1: were set during these floods still stand. They have never
Speaker 1: seen a flood comparable. The roads and crops were also
Speaker 1: damaged as a result of the flooding, which made the
Speaker 1: recovery a lot slower, And even though it was called
Speaker 1: the Starving Winter, there actually weren't many reported deaths from
Speaker 1: starvation or freezing. Oddly lucky. So we've mostly been talking
Speaker 1: about what this winter was like for the predominantly white
Speaker 1: settlers out on the frontier, and that's because most of
Speaker 1: the written records that survived today are from that perspective.
Speaker 1: But this was naturally also an enormously difficult winter for
Speaker 1: the Native Americans in the area too, and in some
Speaker 1: ways it was even harder since by this point in
Speaker 1: American history, many Native Americans had been removed to reservations,
Speaker 1: completely altering the way of life and in many cases
Speaker 1: robbing them of the means that they had previously used
Speaker 1: to sustain themselves through hard winters like this. The Great
Speaker 1: Sioux Reservation at this point in history spanned roughly the
Speaker 1: western half of what is now South Dakota, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't really a fraction of the amount of land that
Speaker 1: that that group had lived on before. One piece that
Speaker 1: we do have is a ledger book drawn by Lakota
Speaker 1: artist and spiritual leader black Hawk, and that was created
Speaker 1: after he worked out a deal with William Edward Canton,
Speaker 1: who was an Indian trader and what was then Dakota Territory.
Speaker 1: And here's how Canton's daughter, whose name was Edith M. Teal,
Speaker 1: described this arrangement. Black Hawk, chief medicine man of the Sioux,
Speaker 1: was in great straits that winter, having several squaws and
Speaker 1: numerous children dependent upon him. He had absolutely nothing, no food,
Speaker 1: and he would not beg father knew his condition. He
Speaker 1: also knew that black Hawk had a wonderful dream, so
Speaker 1: he sent him and asked him to make pictures of
Speaker 1: his dreams, offering to furnish paper and pencils and to
Speaker 1: give him fifty cents in trade at the store for
Speaker 1: each sheet that he brought in. So, after drawing a
Speaker 1: couple of the images from his dream, black Hawk moved
Speaker 1: on to drawings of other things relevant to his daily
Speaker 1: life and the Lakota customs, as well as pictures of
Speaker 1: Crow warriors, who were traditional enemies of the Lakoda and
Speaker 1: in the end, he made seventy six drawings and earned
Speaker 1: thirty eight dollars in trade at the store, although as
Speaker 1: we discussed earlier, it's not completely clear how well stocked
Speaker 1: the store would have even been, but it probably helped
Speaker 1: him out to uh, you know, get some provisions for
Speaker 1: his family. Yeah, and this, uh, this lender book actually
Speaker 1: survives today. They're scans of it on the on the
Speaker 1: internet that we can link to from our show notes.
Speaker 1: One industrious person is actually fact checked whether Laura angles
Speaker 1: Wilder's description of the weather actually uh adds up to
Speaker 1: what the weather was really like, or whether it's a
Speaker 1: sort of embellishment. And before we talk about that, let's
Speaker 1: take a moment talk about our sponsor. So speaking of Laura,
Speaker 1: let's go back to fact checking her story, right, So,
Speaker 1: National Weather Service meteorologist and pH d student Barbara Mays
Speaker 1: Bapstad fact checked the book. What she did was she
Speaker 1: crossed referenced meteorological records from nearby cities including Omaha, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: and Des Moines, Iowat. These are not really that nearby,
Speaker 1: but they are the nearest by cities that were keeping records,
Speaker 1: as well as a few military forts in South Dakota,
Speaker 1: and based on historical accounts that she found, this winter
Speaker 1: got between eleven and fourteen feet of snow on top
Speaker 1: of ice. According to her work, the three day blizzard
Speaker 1: that marks the start of the Long Winter in the
Speaker 1: book really happened from October fifty and in the book
Speaker 1: the children are trapped by a blizzard while at school
Speaker 1: on December six. That also seems to have really happened
Speaker 1: on December two through the fourth, So pretty close there,
Speaker 1: if not. I mean, a couple of days off is
Speaker 1: not that much, no, especially when you're reconstructing it from
Speaker 1: memory many many years later. There was also really a
Speaker 1: blizzard on Christmas Day that year. The trip to get
Speaker 1: wheat that al Monzo and Cap took probably happened on
Speaker 1: February six, based on the clear night in the full moon.
Speaker 1: Bausta did all this fact checking after rereading the book
Speaker 1: during a similarly severe modern winter, which also had a
Speaker 1: thaw that led to flooding, and coincidentally, they had to
Speaker 1: roll out some of the few remaining rotary plows still
Speaker 1: in working order during that particular event, and she theorizes
Speaker 1: that this winter was caused by the jet stream pulling
Speaker 1: Arctic air deep into the Midwest plus an al nemeo year.
Speaker 1: That jet stream pattern is called a negative oscillation of
Speaker 1: the North Atlantic oscillation. Without the negative North Atlantic oscillation,
Speaker 1: it would have been a warmer winter than normal, and
Speaker 1: wetter for that matter, rather than wetter and full of
Speaker 1: the lizards. She has presentations on all of us at
Speaker 1: her website, which you can watch. We will link to
Speaker 1: them from our show notes Love a little history and
Speaker 1: meteorology coming together. There's also an interesting trivia bit. According
Speaker 1: to Bousted, this winter event was actually one of the
Speaker 1: things that led to the prevalence of quote blizzard as
Speaker 1: the word that means a blinding snowstorm before it meant
Speaker 1: a knockout blow, and it was first used in relation
Speaker 1: to weather in eighteen sixty two. So I made fun
Speaker 1: of the cover of my copy of The Long Winter
Speaker 1: because it does not at all suggest my family and
Speaker 1: are nearly starved and my future husband almost died trying
Speaker 1: to get wheat for the town, and said, it looks
Speaker 1: like they're very happy. Let's go play outside winter. And
Speaker 1: while that is kind of incongruous with the material that's inside,
Speaker 1: it turns out that even though it was a very
Speaker 1: lean winter. A lot of the people are on the
Speaker 1: frontier kind of thought of it fondly. They were mostly young,
Speaker 1: healthy people, which helped them make it through. And according
Speaker 1: to the history book that we discussed earlier, they said, quote,
Speaker 1: it is the almost universal testimony of the pioneers that
Speaker 1: they have never gotten more real enjoyment out of a
Speaker 1: winter than they did from the winter of the Big Blockade.
Speaker 1: Shortly after the big snow of February, a thought came
Speaker 1: of sufficient power to soften the surface of the drifts,
Speaker 1: and an immediate freeze followed, forming an impenetrable crust, and
Speaker 1: thereafter slaying was superb. This condition continued until the twenty
Speaker 1: six of April. I would imagine, if you are having
Speaker 1: a horrific, seemingly never ending winter, never ending winter, a
Speaker 1: deaf version of slaying sounds great. Yeah. Well, and then
Speaker 1: a thing that is kind of hard to remember sometimes
Speaker 1: is that being on the frontier um four settlers was
Speaker 1: basically twenty four hour day work essentially, I mean not
Speaker 1: really twenty four hour day, but was a constant labor
Speaker 1: and chore. And if it come to this point that
Speaker 1: you were basically snowed in and you couldn't get any
Speaker 1: provisions and you couldn't do anything. We had a break
Speaker 1: from all the work that was a little it more
Speaker 1: substantial than the normal reduction and workload that would happen
Speaker 1: during winter from not being planting and harvesting crops. Well.
Speaker 1: And it was also a big community building thing because
Speaker 1: they did all throw in their resources together and kind
Speaker 1: of shape equally. And I imagine it formed some really
Speaker 1: interesting and meaningful, you know, long term relationships amongst people. Uh.
Speaker 1: This history book is also kind of glib about the
Speaker 1: like positive side of all of this flooding um, which
Speaker 1: is that most of the frontier towns that were affected
Speaker 1: were so new that there was very little to be lost.
Speaker 1: When all of it was lost, it hits some more
Speaker 1: established cities very hard. But in its tone is sort
Speaker 1: of like it was a good thing they hadn't had
Speaker 1: time to do a whole lot of work here because
Speaker 1: you know, it all got washed away. It's like the
Speaker 1: bright sidiest way to look at it. It was extremely
Speaker 1: bright siding. So yes, do you also have some listener
Speaker 1: mail for us to enjoy? Have some listener mail And
Speaker 1: it's a quick one. Uh. It is from Emma and
Speaker 1: Emma says, Hi, guys, I really love your podcast. My
Speaker 1: name is Emma and I'm fifteen, and I got very
Speaker 1: excited listening to your podcast on Audrey Lord because she's amazing,
Speaker 1: and because through that podcast I learned that she went
Speaker 1: to my high school. Hunter is very different now. We
Speaker 1: are no longer an all girls school, for example, but
Speaker 1: knowing that someone is inspirational as her went here makes
Speaker 1: me feel like all of the stress we are put
Speaker 1: under is worth it. The poetry club Audrey Lord loved
Speaker 1: is no longer a club here at Hunter, but my
Speaker 1: friend and I have decided that we need to remedy
Speaker 1: the situation and restarted as soon as we can. Love
Speaker 1: the podcast. Thanks for the two great episodes, Emma. Thank you, Emma.
Speaker 1: I love an email still much. That made us both
Speaker 1: smile a whole lot. It seems like a nice happy
Speaker 1: note to end on for this Christmas Day podcast. If
Speaker 1: you celebrate Christmas, Mary, Christmas, did you not happy? Whatever
Speaker 1: you celebrate, Yeah, happy holiday or specific Holiday'd be hopefully
Speaker 1: not horrible with her. You're in a cold climate, yes,
Speaker 1: if you're somewhere warm. In summary, happy happy summer Christmas.
Speaker 1: I always think of that ten mentions on called Fightline
Speaker 1: and the Sunnow, which you may or may not like
Speaker 1: depending on how you feel about holiday. Um Yes, happy
Speaker 1: holidays to everyone. Feed. If you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us about this or anything else, we're History Podcast
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook
Speaker 1: dot com slash History class Stuff, and on Twitter at
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Speaker 1: tumbler dot com, and we are on Interest. If you
Speaker 1: would like to learn more about what we've talked about today,
Speaker 1: come to our website. Put the word blizzard into the
Speaker 1: search bar and you will have an article called ten
Speaker 1: Biggest Snowstorms of All Time. These are all even bigger
Speaker 1: than this swamp. They're also individual snowstorms and not an
Speaker 1: entire season worth of snow. So do all of that
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more at our website, which is
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