WEBVTT - 6. Outside the Little Houses 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:03.840 This episode contains descriptions of racist depictions. 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:06.160 Listeners please be advised. 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.319 At her best, Laura Ingles Wylder's Little House on the 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:18.560 Prairie books offered door for readers to walk through or 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.159 drive through, as we did, to find out what is 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:22.120 on the other side. 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:25.880 Ideally, they prompt you to want to know more. 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:30.800 They're an artifact of what's erased and what's alighted and 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.400 what you haven't been told, and that's valuable too, Like 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.640 so much of learning about our history and understanding the 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:39.600 literature is also looking at the negative spaces. 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:42.440 You want to know where in the country the houses 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.640 were located. You want to know why it was called 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:50.360 Indian territory. Who were the Native Americans living alongside the Ingles. 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:54.959 You want to know if that long hard winter really existed? 0:00:56.120 --> 0:01:00.800 What we're buffalo wolves? Do they still exist? What was 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:02.360 the full picture of Laura's world? 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:05.080 For those who have an impulse to do it, to 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:10.000 continue to think about the role that that narrative played 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:11.560 and why and how. 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:15.759 There are hints of that outside world in the books 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.039 if you look for them, but there are few and 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.720 can be confusing if you don't know the bigger picture. 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:30.520 Multiple times Laura Ingall's Wilder will say MA hated Indians. 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:36.480 MA hates Indians, but we never know why. At least 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:38.600 in the Little House series. 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:42.679 Laura and Rose did an extraordinary job of painting a cozy, 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:46.720 magical picture of the Ingles family alone and self sufficient 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:50.960 against the world. But they were neither alone nor in 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:53.720 many cases as self sufficient as the books would like 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:54.600 readers to believe. 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:56.440 No one was. 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:00.360 But understanding the Ingles story as part of a whole 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:03.920 demands understanding that many things can be true at the 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:04.560 same time. 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:09.400 Part of what's interesting about stories like Little House on 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.919 the Prairie is that they are true. 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:13.400 Right. 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:17.160 The perspective is an accurate one as far as it goes, 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:21.520 but it requires putting yourself in the shoes of an 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:27.200 individual embedded and really complicated, sometimes violent systems. The way 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:31.000 that American culture knows and doesn't know that history is 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:32.040 pretty remarkable. 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.480 In this episode, we're going to briefly try and paint 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:42.400 a bigger picture for you. Imagine you are standing in 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:46.200 the doorway of any one of Laura's Little houses. You're 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:54.919 looking outside. What might you actually be seeing. I'm Glennis McNicol, 0:02:55.800 --> 0:03:43.520 and this is Wilder Let's start by going over some 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.640 of the basics. Laura was born in Wisconsin in eighteen 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:50.680 sixty seven, two years after the end of the Civil 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.880 War and five years after the US Dakota War of 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:57.280 eighteen sixty two. Unless you read the Little House Books 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:01.400 alongside an encyclopedia, you'd know neither of these things. The 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:03.200 only nod we get to the Civil War and Little 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.760 House is in the first book, Little House in the 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:10.040 Big Woods, Laura's uncle George briefly appears at Grandma's house. 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.680 According to Pa, George has been quote wild since he 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.320 came back from the war. Uncle George still wears his 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:21.640 blue army coat with brass buttons and blows his bugle 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:22.359 into the woods. 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:26.599 But that's it. There's no further explanation. 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.400 As a kid in Canada having no concept of the 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:35.039 Civil War, this meant nothing to me. I'm considering the 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:38.160 global reach of the Little House Books. I doubt I'm 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:42.359 alone in not understanding the reference. But it's obviously important 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.200 in the context of Laura's life and the America that 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:46.320 would spend her childhood. 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:46.840 Moving through. 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:50.640 The entire Little House series takes place in the aftermath 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:53.120 of the Civil War and at the height of the 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:54.599 push for westward expansion. 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:59.200 So the period after the Civil War, which is when 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:06.520 all of this manifested, was one big land giveaway after 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:10.960 another from the federal government in an effort to push 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:13.760 settlement west of the Mississippi River. 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.160 This is environmental historian Chris Wells. 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:19.240 He talked to us about the Homestead Act of eighteen 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:23.080 sixty two, one of the largest government efforts to convince 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:24.240 settlers to go west. 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:28.279 The basic premise is that anyone who was a citizen 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:33.200 or who could become a citizen, could make a land claim, 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:38.599 and after paying minimal filing fees, could have the land 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:42.400 needed to them by the federal government as long as 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:44.680 you stayed on the land for a certain period of 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:46.839 time and made some improvements to it. 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:49.560 Little House is how I learned about the Homestead Act. 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:52.800 The process of staking a claim is detailed and by 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:56.400 the shores of Silver Lake in a chapter called Pause 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:00.720 bet After their first winter in the Dakota Tis territories, 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:03.040 pau goes to file on his claim. 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:05.160 He lines up overnight. 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.680 The men behind him try to tackle him because they 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:13.160 want his land, but mister Edwards, the wildcat from Tennessee, 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:19.000 appears and saves Paw. In the books, we're led to 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.600 believe that homesteaders have an almost. 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:25.360 Divine right to this new land. Paw makes it sound 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:25.880 like a game. 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:31.560 Quote, girls, I've bet Uncle Sam fourteen dollars against one 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.240 hundred and sixty acres of land, going to help me 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.919 win the bet? But of course, the motives behind the 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:40.919 Homestead Act are far more complicated than what we're told 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:41.400 in the book. 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:48.960 The federal government's claim on that land was complicated by 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.400 the fact that this was essentially a colonial takeover of 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:57.279 Native American territory. One of the reasons the country's leaders 0:06:57.279 --> 0:06:59.960 wanted to get people onto the land and to say, 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:05.320 was basically to stake a irreversible claim to it and 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.839 to finalize the process of wresting it from hands of 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:10.680 Indigenous inhabitants. 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:17.240 And naturally, the government's decisions were also intertwined with the 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:21.920 interests of American industry, namely the railroad. 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:27.520 There are a couple of ways in which the railroad 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.440 and the Homestead Act are intertwined. 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:35.120 That's Flannery Burke, Professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University. 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:41.280 The railroad was financed by grants of so called public 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:45.400 land to the railroad, which the railroad could then sell 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:51.040 to potential settlers to finance the building of the railroad itself. 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:55.800 And for the most part, this financing scheme. 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:56.720 Did not work at all. 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.040 Almost every railroad, I think all but one railroad went 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:06.200 bankrupt at some point, so it was not an effective 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:08.040 form of financing the railroad. 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:11.720 The Homestead Act also meant a lot of land was 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:15.160 available to people who hadn't been able to own property before, 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.640 and a lot of people, regardless of their farming experience, 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:20.520 were willing to take the gamble. 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:26.280 The Homestead Act was extraordinarily democratic for its time period. 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:31.200 Women could homestead, immigrants could homestead, African Americans could homestead. 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:36.640 It was locally administered, so discrimination against all of those 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:40.840 groups might mitigate against their successful settlement on the land, 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:45.120 but it was really open to a wide variety of people. 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.120 North Dakota was one of the most ethnically and linguistically 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:53.760 diverse places in the late nineteenth century of almost any 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:55.199 place in the United States. 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:59.320 That diversity is almost entirely absent from the Little House Books, 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.800 with the exception of the Native Americans, the Ingles encounter. 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:07.240 The only non English speaking characters we meet is mister Hanson, 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.760 who the Ingles by the dugout from, and Missus Nelson 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:15.400 and her daughter Anna, who only speaks Norwegian. This absence 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:19.040 was intentional on Laura and Rose's part. Rose in particular 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.400 was keen to emphasize the self sufficiency of the Ingles family, 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:26.360 a core theme in the series. The Ingle's ability to 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:28.960 fend for themselves is part of the cozy magic of 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:33.160 the books. The idea of absolute independence from all systems 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:39.000 of support reappears again and again. These themes are deeply familiar. 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:44.440 The belief in self sufficiency, the rugged individual, the hard worker, 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.360 pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. These traits are as 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.760 closely associated with what it means to be American as 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:56.800 cowboys in apple Pie. 0:09:56.920 --> 0:09:59.439 The truth is much different. 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:04.280 Any hope of survival on the American frontier was impossible 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:08.520 without some sort of outside structural support. The individual is 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:13.000 a fantasy, a brutal fantasy. 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:17.240 The forced removal of Native people was a social service 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:18.079 for settlers. 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:23.120 The forced removal of Native Americans was government support. 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:25.240 It made the Homestead Act possible. 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:28.760 Settlers couldn't be settlers if the government hadn't cleared to 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:31.800 the land, and settlers wouldn't be able to remain on 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:35.480 that land if the government hadn't aligned themselves with the railroads. 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:41.520 The financing of the railroad was a social service for settlers. 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:45.920 They actually want more government in their life. 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.040 And here's where we get into multiple things being true 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:51.920 at the same time, because it's also true that on 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.320 an individual level, homesteaders were often left to fend for 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:58.320 themselves under the most brutal circumstances. 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:00.840 I mean, people were that are really starving. 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:01.160 Right. 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:03.640 Here's environmental historian Chris Wells. 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:03.920 Again. 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.240 You have these plagues multiple years in a row for 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.160 people who have to feed themselves as you can't feed yourself. 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.240 Remember the grasshoppers that plagued the Ingles and on the 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.160 banks of Plumb Creek. There were no social services to 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.040 help starving settlers. Instead of providing food or money, one 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:22.960 of the government's solutions to the problem was to tell 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:30.280 farmers to pray the grasshoppers away. Obviously, that didn't solve 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:34.120 the problem, but eventually the government did provide some relief, 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.120 though it was scant and at times seemingly cruel. 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:42.760 There was a requirement that farmers had to sell their 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:47.640 livestock before they could claim any sort of aid, and 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:50.160 they had to sign a sworn oath that they were 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:54.760 entirely without means. So this is something that Lori Ingle's 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.200 father had to do. He signed the pledge, he got 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:02.360 a barrel of flour worth about five bucks, and then 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:07.040 walked a couple hundred miles to a farm where he 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:09.640 could hire himself out for the harvest season. 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:14.360 In the books, after the grasshoppers destroy the crops, Paw 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:15.959 sets out to look for work. 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:16.680 Of his own volition. 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.520 Any hint that he was participating in a government relief 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:25.439 program is completely absent. It's also true that the little 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:29.559 relief that was provided was more than had ever existed 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:31.600 prior to this, so. 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.200 The idea that any sort of aid from the public 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.480 sector would have been available seems kind of remarkable. 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:41.480 What gets lost in how we learn about all this, 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.280 whether it be from the Little House series or the 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.600 general narrative of American history, is that two things can 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:50.600 be true at the same time. Homesteaders could be getting 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:54.439 more support than ever before, and yet it was still 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:55.000 not enough. 0:12:57.080 --> 0:12:59.920 So what's true for an individual and what's true in 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:04.040 the broader context are often not the same thing. 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:06.880 And I think that's a useful way of thinking. 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:11.560 About the debates over POD being a failure and what 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:13.880 it was like to be out on the frontier and 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:19.679 to be a settler trying to turn what had up 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:24.800 until very recently been indigenous land that got often violently 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:29.319 rested away and then turned over to anyone who bothered 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.560 to show up and had the will and the means 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:34.079 to try to make a go of it. 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:39.040 Settlers could be participating in violent systems and still be 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:40.520 left enormously vulnerable. 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:45.120 So it took a huge amount of violence and willpower 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:47.960 and throwing the nation's way around to make the land 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:52.200 available to settlers. But then they were sort of on 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:56.480 their own, and so that's not a great set of 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:59.240 conditions to set people up for success. 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:03.120 Home centers may have been left on their own, but 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:07.160 they were not left without purpose. If there's one thing 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.520 America knows how to do better than anyone else, it's 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:15.160 telling a story. And more powerful than any government service 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:18.600 was the mythology the nation wrapped around itself in the 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:24.160 nineteenth century. We're talking of course, about manifest destiny, the 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:28.800 belief that white settlers were destined to expand across America, from. 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:29.360 Coast to coast. 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:34.440 I did not encounter the term manifest destiny until well 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.800 into my twenties, long after I'd moved to the US. 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.120 I wanted to know from someone who grew up here 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.560 whether it was still taught as a part of American history, 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:51.480 and if so, how so, I asked Joe. So, obviously 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.920 I didn't grow up in the American education system. I 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.480 grew up in the Canadian education system. 0:14:58.040 --> 0:14:59.840 Which is probably better than I. 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:03.800 It's just very it's very different. 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:06.360 And so a lot of my American history education came 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:11.160 through television and also through a very Canadian lens. Of 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:14.200 the Americans like to say they won this war, but 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.440 if they had, we'd be part of America sort of skepticism. 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.080 But so I'm just curious as we're talking about this, 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:24.760 you know, the idea of manifest destiny comes up again 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:28.360 and again where Rose particular is concerned, but where Little 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.280 House is concerned, and I want to sort of understand 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:35.840 if that was a concept you were taught, and if so, 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:36.760 how you were taught. 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:40.800 I don't remember learning about manifest destiny when I was 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:44.320 a kid or a teenager. I learned it when I 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:48.680 was in grad school at NYU studying religious studies. 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:49.720 I think that. 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:55.760 Was the first time that I heard the phrase manifest destiny. 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:59.080 Isn't that crazy that I was in graduate school? 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:01.440 But I also think gets so telling that you heard 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:05.120 it in religious studies. That says quite a lot because 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.800 my understanding of it now, I mean, the idea that 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:11.760 white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:16.240 of North America feels like a religious belief system. 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.560 Oh ahead and sending up in a religious studies master's program. 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.760 Threaded throughout the Little House books is the idea the 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:29.520 Ingles are pursuing some kind of mythic Western movement. One 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:32.800 of Pau's core character traits is that he always wants 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:35.320 to keep going all the way out to a place 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:36.000 called Oregon. 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:37.520 He tells Laura. 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:42.000 This reinvention of self is core to American mythology. If 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.600 one enterprise fails, you simply pick up and keep going 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:49.480 to the next, driven by hope and the potential of 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:52.880 winning the bat With Uncle Sam, we think of the 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:56.680 Little House series and the Ingles family as fulfilling this 0:16:56.840 --> 0:17:01.040 idea of the westward American journey. When we talked to 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:05.720 historian Flannery Burke about this, she pointed out something so obvious. 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.200 I was stunned it had never occurred to me before. 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:14.960 One of the things that is frequently overlooked, even by 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:21.120 scholars these days, is that Laura Ingles and her family 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:26.000 were moving north and south much more frequently than they 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:27.560 were moving west. 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:32.679 Of course, I knew this practically. I'd mapped out Laura's 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.480 travels on an atlas since childhood. We had driven to 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:41.520 all of the houses Laura was born in Wisconsin. Then 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:45.800 the family went south to Kansas, back up to Wisconsin, 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:52.520 then over to Minnesota, south again to Iowa, then back 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:54.600 up on a little bit west. 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:55.200 To South Dakota. 0:17:56.880 --> 0:18:00.399 And that's where they stop until Laura and all Manso 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:06.280 and Rose go south again to Missouri. But here's an 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:11.800 extraordinary example of mythology over reality, because even knowing all 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.760 of this, I'd always conceived of their journey as a 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:16.520 westward one. 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:22.800 I think that the power of the mythology that makes 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.040 it hard for us to imagine the Ingles family moving 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.399 north and south. That same mythology of the frontier, the 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.919 mythology of manifest destiny, the power of that myth cannot 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:37.879 be underestimated. It is just extraordinarily, extraordinarily powerful, and so 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:41.880 people think, well, we move further and further west, even 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.320 if they didn't, and if we move further in fur 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:46.639 their west, then we had to do better and better. 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.560 Progress is a necessary part of that mythology. 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:54.840 But the Ingles never really did better until Laura achieved 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:58.240 financial success in our seventies. Every member of the family 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:03.120 essentially died in poverty. But that mythology of Western movement 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.080 and progress and success is a hard one to shake 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.880 because its promise of a new beginning is so appealing. 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:13.600 For Rose especially. 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:17.760 It may have provided her with the dramatic and purposeful 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.639 narrative her actual upbringing lacked. No one romanticized the Ozarks. 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.280 The Ozarks are where the Wilders settled. It's where Rosewilder 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:29.600 Lane grew up until she finished high. 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.960 School in the South, and the Ozarks. 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:38.800 If the Midwest is overlooked, the Ozarks are overlooked by everybody, 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.800 you know, not part of the Midwest, not part of 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:45.439 the West, not part of the South, their own place. 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:51.320 It's not surprising to me that Rose Wilder Lane and 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.760 the Little House Books might come out of that environment. 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:59.040 Rose had always resented her poor upbringing in the Ozarks. 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.600 The Frontier myth, on the other hand, gave poverty and suffering, 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:08.119 meaning there was a lot of poverty and a lot 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:12.480 of suffering, and without that fantasy, it's easy to imagine 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:17.720 it would have been unbearable. The divide between American mythology 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.199 and reality is perhaps never more stark than when it 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:25.159 comes to the history of Native Americans. The mythology of 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.280 the heroic white settler has enabled us to look away 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:29.560 from the brutal truth. 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:30.959 Of the Native American experience. 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.440 After the break, we're going to talk about one of 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:38.480 the most significant events in American history, one that contributes 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:41.679 to the worst narratives but continues to be left out 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:45.320 of many history books. It also helps put in context 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:56.800 some of Maa's worst behavior. In some ways, the Little 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:59.960 House books can read like an elegy for a lost world, 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:00.800 and to. 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:02.720 A degree, that's what they are. 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:06.680 Pau moves his family out of the Big Woods because 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:08.200 he complains that there is no game. 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:10.280 The land has been stripped bare. 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:17.560 In eighteen fifty, which is right after Minnesota Territory was 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:22.360 created as a territory, the settler population was six thousand, 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:23.480 seventy seven. 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:26.720 That's environmental historian Chris Wells. Again. 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:31.720 By eighteen fifty seven, the population swelled to more than 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:37.440 one hundred and fifty thousand. The population doubled between eighteen 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:41.760 sixty and eighteen seventy. Then it nearly doubled again by 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:46.680 eighteen eighty to seven hundred and eighty thousand, and by 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:49.280 eighteen ninety it was one point three million. 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:53.280 This influx of settlers took an immediate toll on the 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:56.280 land and the people who had long called it home. 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:01.720 Prior to this population explosiona had literally been the land 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:03.560 of plenty, looking. 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:05.840 As far as you could see across the Great Plains, 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:08.639 and have it just be covered with an undulating mass 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:12.000 of bison as far as you could see. So those 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:19.440 experiences of overwhelming numbers of a single animal or insect 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.399 or bird were one of the ways that some people 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:25.520 thought of what made America different and special compared to 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:31.840 the old World Europe, and that super abundance was characteristic. 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:38.639 That superabundance quickly disappeared much of it during Laura's lifetime. 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:42.840 The extraordinary descriptions she provides of our natural surroundings in 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:46.160 the books are actually a landscape that no longer exists, 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:50.199 and while she doesn't say so specifically, all through the 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:54.040 books is woven this sense of loss. In the final 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:56.919 pages of By the Shores of Silver Lake, the last 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:01.359 book to convey any feeling of wildness, Laura's youngest sister, Grace, 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:05.600 gets lost on the prairie. Laura eventually finds her in 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:09.680 a large, round hollow in the ground that's carpeted in violets. 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:12.000 She later asked. 0:23:11.800 --> 0:23:15.879 Paw what the hollow was, quote, could it be a 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:20.520 fairy ring? It isn't like a real place, truly. They 0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:26.360 aren't like ordinary violets. Ma naturally admonishes Laura for believing 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:31.560 in fairies, but then pa explains, quote, you're right, Laura. 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:33.640 Human hands didn't. 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:37.240 Make that place, but your fairies were big, ugly brutes. 0:23:38.200 --> 0:23:42.240 That place is an old buffalo wallow. Now the buffalo 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:47.760 are gone and grass grows over their wallows, grass and violets. 0:23:49.359 --> 0:23:52.320 I know that was so appealing to me, you know, 0:23:52.480 --> 0:23:56.320 Laura riding free on the prairie or the buffalo wallow 0:23:56.520 --> 0:23:57.560 with the crocuses. 0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:02.159 Here's Lizzie Skernick, writer and professor of children's literature at. 0:24:02.080 --> 0:24:05.439 NYU, and what's interesting is of course, when you say, oh, 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:08.280 that's an old buffalo wallow, it's like, yeah, it's so 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:11.160 old general Buffalo anymore. 0:24:12.680 --> 0:24:15.080 Paw never tells us why the buffalo are all gone. 0:24:16.640 --> 0:24:20.400 The buffalo are all gone because the US government had 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:23.440 exterminated them in an attempt to remove the main food 0:24:23.520 --> 0:24:26.880 source of the Native Americans and make the land available 0:24:26.920 --> 0:24:31.480 for white settlement. In the late eighteen sixties, the government 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:35.040 called for huntsmen to slaughter as many buffalo as they could. 0:24:36.320 --> 0:24:41.520 Buffalo Bill, the legendary Western figure, was so named because 0:24:41.560 --> 0:24:44.919 he claimed to have killed over four thousand buffalo in 0:24:44.960 --> 0:24:50.560 eighteen months. One US Army colonel was quoted as saying, quote, 0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:55.119 kill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an 0:24:55.200 --> 0:25:00.000 Indian gone end quote. Many of the hunters were equipped 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:02.800 by the US Army with guns to do just that. 0:25:04.560 --> 0:25:09.800 Between eighteen forty and eighteen ninety, the population of buffalo 0:25:09.880 --> 0:25:14.400 in the US went from thirty five million to five 0:25:14.520 --> 0:25:21.520 hundred and forty one. The removal of food sources for 0:25:21.600 --> 0:25:25.280 Native Americans by the US government is a reoccurring event 0:25:25.400 --> 0:25:29.160 over the nineteenth century, and one that takes many forms. 0:25:30.119 --> 0:25:32.040 It is also the root cause of one of the 0:25:32.040 --> 0:25:36.600 most important conflicts between settlers and Native Americans in American history, 0:25:37.440 --> 0:25:40.199 one that for a long time has been left out 0:25:40.240 --> 0:25:44.000 of many history books. It's almost entirely left out of 0:25:44.040 --> 0:25:45.320