Speaker 1: This episode contains descriptions of racist depictions.
Speaker 2: Listeners please be advised.
Speaker 1: At her best, Laura Ingles Wylder's Little House on the
Speaker 1: Prairie books offered door for readers to walk through or
Speaker 1: drive through, as we did, to find out what is
Speaker 1: on the other side.
Speaker 2: Ideally, they prompt you to want to know more.
Speaker 3: They're an artifact of what's erased and what's alighted and
Speaker 3: what you haven't been told, and that's valuable too, Like
Speaker 3: so much of learning about our history and understanding the
Speaker 3: literature is also looking at the negative spaces.
Speaker 1: You want to know where in the country the houses
Speaker 1: were located. You want to know why it was called
Speaker 1: Indian territory. Who were the Native Americans living alongside the Ingles.
Speaker 1: You want to know if that long hard winter really existed?
Speaker 1: What we're buffalo wolves? Do they still exist? What was
Speaker 1: the full picture of Laura's world?
Speaker 3: For those who have an impulse to do it, to
Speaker 3: continue to think about the role that that narrative played
Speaker 3: and why and how.
Speaker 1: There are hints of that outside world in the books
Speaker 1: if you look for them, but there are few and
Speaker 1: can be confusing if you don't know the bigger picture.
Speaker 4: Multiple times Laura Ingall's Wilder will say MA hated Indians.
Speaker 4: MA hates Indians, but we never know why. At least
Speaker 4: in the Little House series.
Speaker 1: Laura and Rose did an extraordinary job of painting a cozy,
Speaker 1: magical picture of the Ingles family alone and self sufficient
Speaker 1: against the world. But they were neither alone nor in
Speaker 1: many cases as self sufficient as the books would like
Speaker 1: readers to believe.
Speaker 2: No one was.
Speaker 1: But understanding the Ingles story as part of a whole
Speaker 1: demands understanding that many things can be true at the
Speaker 1: same time.
Speaker 5: Part of what's interesting about stories like Little House on
Speaker 5: the Prairie is that they are true.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: The perspective is an accurate one as far as it goes,
Speaker 5: but it requires putting yourself in the shoes of an
Speaker 5: individual embedded and really complicated, sometimes violent systems. The way
Speaker 5: that American culture knows and doesn't know that history is
Speaker 5: pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to briefly try and paint
Speaker 1: a bigger picture for you. Imagine you are standing in
Speaker 1: the doorway of any one of Laura's Little houses. You're
Speaker 1: looking outside. What might you actually be seeing. I'm Glennis McNicol,
Speaker 1: and this is Wilder Let's start by going over some
Speaker 1: of the basics. Laura was born in Wisconsin in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, two years after the end of the Civil
Speaker 1: War and five years after the US Dakota War of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two. Unless you read the Little House Books
Speaker 1: alongside an encyclopedia, you'd know neither of these things. The
Speaker 1: only nod we get to the Civil War and Little
Speaker 1: House is in the first book, Little House in the
Speaker 1: Big Woods, Laura's uncle George briefly appears at Grandma's house.
Speaker 1: According to Pa, George has been quote wild since he
Speaker 1: came back from the war. Uncle George still wears his
Speaker 1: blue army coat with brass buttons and blows his bugle
Speaker 1: into the woods.
Speaker 2: But that's it. There's no further explanation.
Speaker 1: As a kid in Canada having no concept of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, this meant nothing to me. I'm considering the
Speaker 1: global reach of the Little House Books. I doubt I'm
Speaker 1: alone in not understanding the reference. But it's obviously important
Speaker 1: in the context of Laura's life and the America that
Speaker 1: would spend her childhood.
Speaker 2: Moving through.
Speaker 1: The entire Little House series takes place in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the Civil War and at the height of the
Speaker 1: push for westward expansion.
Speaker 5: So the period after the Civil War, which is when
Speaker 5: all of this manifested, was one big land giveaway after
Speaker 5: another from the federal government in an effort to push
Speaker 5: settlement west of the Mississippi River.
Speaker 2: This is environmental historian Chris Wells.
Speaker 1: He talked to us about the Homestead Act of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, one of the largest government efforts to convince
Speaker 1: settlers to go west.
Speaker 5: The basic premise is that anyone who was a citizen
Speaker 5: or who could become a citizen, could make a land claim,
Speaker 5: and after paying minimal filing fees, could have the land
Speaker 5: needed to them by the federal government as long as
Speaker 5: you stayed on the land for a certain period of
Speaker 5: time and made some improvements to it.
Speaker 1: Little House is how I learned about the Homestead Act.
Speaker 1: The process of staking a claim is detailed and by
Speaker 1: the shores of Silver Lake in a chapter called Pause
Speaker 1: bet After their first winter in the Dakota Tis territories,
Speaker 1: pau goes to file on his claim.
Speaker 2: He lines up overnight.
Speaker 1: The men behind him try to tackle him because they
Speaker 1: want his land, but mister Edwards, the wildcat from Tennessee,
Speaker 1: appears and saves Paw. In the books, we're led to
Speaker 1: believe that homesteaders have an almost.
Speaker 2: Divine right to this new land. Paw makes it sound
Speaker 2: like a game.
Speaker 1: Quote, girls, I've bet Uncle Sam fourteen dollars against one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty acres of land, going to help me
Speaker 1: win the bet? But of course, the motives behind the
Speaker 1: Homestead Act are far more complicated than what we're told
Speaker 1: in the book.
Speaker 5: The federal government's claim on that land was complicated by
Speaker 5: the fact that this was essentially a colonial takeover of
Speaker 5: Native American territory. One of the reasons the country's leaders
Speaker 5: wanted to get people onto the land and to say,
Speaker 5: was basically to stake a irreversible claim to it and
Speaker 5: to finalize the process of wresting it from hands of
Speaker 5: Indigenous inhabitants.
Speaker 1: And naturally, the government's decisions were also intertwined with the
Speaker 1: interests of American industry, namely the railroad.
Speaker 7: There are a couple of ways in which the railroad
Speaker 7: and the Homestead Act are intertwined.
Speaker 1: That's Flannery Burke, Professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University.
Speaker 7: The railroad was financed by grants of so called public
Speaker 7: land to the railroad, which the railroad could then sell
Speaker 7: to potential settlers to finance the building of the railroad itself.
Speaker 7: And for the most part, this financing scheme.
Speaker 2: Did not work at all.
Speaker 7: Almost every railroad, I think all but one railroad went
Speaker 7: bankrupt at some point, so it was not an effective
Speaker 7: form of financing the railroad.
Speaker 1: The Homestead Act also meant a lot of land was
Speaker 1: available to people who hadn't been able to own property before,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people, regardless of their farming experience,
Speaker 1: were willing to take the gamble.
Speaker 7: The Homestead Act was extraordinarily democratic for its time period.
Speaker 7: Women could homestead, immigrants could homestead, African Americans could homestead.
Speaker 7: It was locally administered, so discrimination against all of those
Speaker 7: groups might mitigate against their successful settlement on the land,
Speaker 7: but it was really open to a wide variety of people.
Speaker 7: North Dakota was one of the most ethnically and linguistically
Speaker 7: diverse places in the late nineteenth century of almost any
Speaker 7: place in the United States.
Speaker 1: That diversity is almost entirely absent from the Little House Books,
Speaker 1: with the exception of the Native Americans, the Ingles encounter.
Speaker 1: The only non English speaking characters we meet is mister Hanson,
Speaker 1: who the Ingles by the dugout from, and Missus Nelson
Speaker 1: and her daughter Anna, who only speaks Norwegian. This absence
Speaker 1: was intentional on Laura and Rose's part. Rose in particular
Speaker 1: was keen to emphasize the self sufficiency of the Ingles family,
Speaker 1: a core theme in the series. The Ingle's ability to
Speaker 1: fend for themselves is part of the cozy magic of
Speaker 1: the books. The idea of absolute independence from all systems
Speaker 1: of support reappears again and again. These themes are deeply familiar.
Speaker 1: The belief in self sufficiency, the rugged individual, the hard worker,
Speaker 1: pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. These traits are as
Speaker 1: closely associated with what it means to be American as
Speaker 1: cowboys in apple Pie.
Speaker 2: The truth is much different.
Speaker 1: Any hope of survival on the American frontier was impossible
Speaker 1: without some sort of outside structural support. The individual is
Speaker 1: a fantasy, a brutal fantasy.
Speaker 7: The forced removal of Native people was a social service
Speaker 7: for settlers.
Speaker 1: The forced removal of Native Americans was government support.
Speaker 2: It made the Homestead Act possible.
Speaker 1: Settlers couldn't be settlers if the government hadn't cleared to
Speaker 1: the land, and settlers wouldn't be able to remain on
Speaker 1: that land if the government hadn't aligned themselves with the railroads.
Speaker 7: The financing of the railroad was a social service for settlers.
Speaker 7: They actually want more government in their life.
Speaker 1: And here's where we get into multiple things being true
Speaker 1: at the same time, because it's also true that on
Speaker 1: an individual level, homesteaders were often left to fend for
Speaker 1: themselves under the most brutal circumstances.
Speaker 5: I mean, people were that are really starving.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: Here's environmental historian Chris Wells.
Speaker 6: Again.
Speaker 5: You have these plagues multiple years in a row for
Speaker 5: people who have to feed themselves as you can't feed yourself.
Speaker 1: Remember the grasshoppers that plagued the Ingles and on the
Speaker 1: banks of Plumb Creek. There were no social services to
Speaker 1: help starving settlers. Instead of providing food or money, one
Speaker 1: of the government's solutions to the problem was to tell
Speaker 1: farmers to pray the grasshoppers away. Obviously, that didn't solve
Speaker 1: the problem, but eventually the government did provide some relief,
Speaker 1: though it was scant and at times seemingly cruel.
Speaker 5: There was a requirement that farmers had to sell their
Speaker 5: livestock before they could claim any sort of aid, and
Speaker 5: they had to sign a sworn oath that they were
Speaker 5: entirely without means. So this is something that Lori Ingle's
Speaker 5: father had to do. He signed the pledge, he got
Speaker 5: a barrel of flour worth about five bucks, and then
Speaker 5: walked a couple hundred miles to a farm where he
Speaker 5: could hire himself out for the harvest season.
Speaker 1: In the books, after the grasshoppers destroy the crops, Paw
Speaker 1: sets out to look for work.
Speaker 2: Of his own volition.
Speaker 1: Any hint that he was participating in a government relief
Speaker 1: program is completely absent. It's also true that the little
Speaker 1: relief that was provided was more than had ever existed
Speaker 1: prior to this, so.
Speaker 5: The idea that any sort of aid from the public
Speaker 5: sector would have been available seems kind of remarkable.
Speaker 1: What gets lost in how we learn about all this,
Speaker 1: whether it be from the Little House series or the
Speaker 1: general narrative of American history, is that two things can
Speaker 1: be true at the same time. Homesteaders could be getting
Speaker 1: more support than ever before, and yet it was still
Speaker 1: not enough.
Speaker 5: So what's true for an individual and what's true in
Speaker 5: the broader context are often not the same thing.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a useful way of thinking.
Speaker 5: About the debates over POD being a failure and what
Speaker 5: it was like to be out on the frontier and
Speaker 5: to be a settler trying to turn what had up
Speaker 5: until very recently been indigenous land that got often violently
Speaker 5: rested away and then turned over to anyone who bothered
Speaker 5: to show up and had the will and the means
Speaker 5: to try to make a go of it.
Speaker 1: Settlers could be participating in violent systems and still be
Speaker 1: left enormously vulnerable.
Speaker 5: So it took a huge amount of violence and willpower
Speaker 5: and throwing the nation's way around to make the land
Speaker 5: available to settlers. But then they were sort of on
Speaker 5: their own, and so that's not a great set of
Speaker 5: conditions to set people up for success.
Speaker 1: Home centers may have been left on their own, but
Speaker 1: they were not left without purpose. If there's one thing
Speaker 1: America knows how to do better than anyone else, it's
Speaker 1: telling a story. And more powerful than any government service
Speaker 1: was the mythology the nation wrapped around itself in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. We're talking of course, about manifest destiny, the
Speaker 1: belief that white settlers were destined to expand across America, from.
Speaker 2: Coast to coast.
Speaker 1: I did not encounter the term manifest destiny until well
Speaker 1: into my twenties, long after I'd moved to the US.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know from someone who grew up here
Speaker 1: whether it was still taught as a part of American history,
Speaker 1: and if so, how so, I asked Joe. So, obviously
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up in the American education system. I
Speaker 1: grew up in the Canadian education system.
Speaker 8: Which is probably better than I.
Speaker 2: It's just very it's very different.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of my American history education came
Speaker 1: through television and also through a very Canadian lens. Of
Speaker 1: the Americans like to say they won this war, but
Speaker 1: if they had, we'd be part of America sort of skepticism.
Speaker 1: But so I'm just curious as we're talking about this,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of manifest destiny comes up again
Speaker 1: and again where Rose particular is concerned, but where Little
Speaker 1: House is concerned, and I want to sort of understand
Speaker 1: if that was a concept you were taught, and if so,
Speaker 1: how you were taught.
Speaker 8: I don't remember learning about manifest destiny when I was
Speaker 8: a kid or a teenager. I learned it when I
Speaker 8: was in grad school at NYU studying religious studies.
Speaker 2: I think that.
Speaker 8: Was the first time that I heard the phrase manifest destiny.
Speaker 8: Isn't that crazy that I was in graduate school?
Speaker 1: But I also think gets so telling that you heard
Speaker 1: it in religious studies. That says quite a lot because
Speaker 1: my understanding of it now, I mean, the idea that
Speaker 1: white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent
Speaker 1: of North America feels like a religious belief system.
Speaker 8: Oh ahead and sending up in a religious studies master's program.
Speaker 1: Threaded throughout the Little House books is the idea the
Speaker 1: Ingles are pursuing some kind of mythic Western movement. One
Speaker 1: of Pau's core character traits is that he always wants
Speaker 1: to keep going all the way out to a place
Speaker 1: called Oregon.
Speaker 2: He tells Laura.
Speaker 1: This reinvention of self is core to American mythology. If
Speaker 1: one enterprise fails, you simply pick up and keep going
Speaker 1: to the next, driven by hope and the potential of
Speaker 1: winning the bat With Uncle Sam, we think of the
Speaker 1: Little House series and the Ingles family as fulfilling this
Speaker 1: idea of the westward American journey. When we talked to
Speaker 1: historian Flannery Burke about this, she pointed out something so obvious.
Speaker 2: I was stunned it had never occurred to me before.
Speaker 7: One of the things that is frequently overlooked, even by
Speaker 7: scholars these days, is that Laura Ingles and her family
Speaker 7: were moving north and south much more frequently than they
Speaker 7: were moving west.
Speaker 1: Of course, I knew this practically. I'd mapped out Laura's
Speaker 1: travels on an atlas since childhood. We had driven to
Speaker 1: all of the houses Laura was born in Wisconsin. Then
Speaker 1: the family went south to Kansas, back up to Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: then over to Minnesota, south again to Iowa, then back
Speaker 1: up on a little bit west.
Speaker 2: To South Dakota.
Speaker 1: And that's where they stop until Laura and all Manso
Speaker 1: and Rose go south again to Missouri. But here's an
Speaker 1: extraordinary example of mythology over reality, because even knowing all
Speaker 1: of this, I'd always conceived of their journey as a
Speaker 1: westward one.
Speaker 7: I think that the power of the mythology that makes
Speaker 7: it hard for us to imagine the Ingles family moving
Speaker 7: north and south. That same mythology of the frontier, the
Speaker 7: mythology of manifest destiny, the power of that myth cannot
Speaker 7: be underestimated. It is just extraordinarily, extraordinarily powerful, and so
Speaker 7: people think, well, we move further and further west, even
Speaker 7: if they didn't, and if we move further in fur
Speaker 7: their west, then we had to do better and better.
Speaker 7: Progress is a necessary part of that mythology.
Speaker 1: But the Ingles never really did better until Laura achieved
Speaker 1: financial success in our seventies. Every member of the family
Speaker 1: essentially died in poverty. But that mythology of Western movement
Speaker 1: and progress and success is a hard one to shake
Speaker 1: because its promise of a new beginning is so appealing.
Speaker 2: For Rose especially.
Speaker 1: It may have provided her with the dramatic and purposeful
Speaker 1: narrative her actual upbringing lacked. No one romanticized the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: The Ozarks are where the Wilders settled. It's where Rosewilder
Speaker 1: Lane grew up until she finished high.
Speaker 2: School in the South, and the Ozarks.
Speaker 7: If the Midwest is overlooked, the Ozarks are overlooked by everybody,
Speaker 7: you know, not part of the Midwest, not part of
Speaker 7: the West, not part of the South, their own place.
Speaker 7: It's not surprising to me that Rose Wilder Lane and
Speaker 7: the Little House Books might come out of that environment.
Speaker 1: Rose had always resented her poor upbringing in the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: The Frontier myth, on the other hand, gave poverty and suffering,
Speaker 1: meaning there was a lot of poverty and a lot
Speaker 1: of suffering, and without that fantasy, it's easy to imagine
Speaker 1: it would have been unbearable. The divide between American mythology
Speaker 1: and reality is perhaps never more stark than when it
Speaker 1: comes to the history of Native Americans. The mythology of
Speaker 1: the heroic white settler has enabled us to look away
Speaker 1: from the brutal truth.
Speaker 2: Of the Native American experience.
Speaker 1: After the break, we're going to talk about one of
Speaker 1: the most significant events in American history, one that contributes
Speaker 1: to the worst narratives but continues to be left out
Speaker 1: of many history books. It also helps put in context
Speaker 1: some of Maa's worst behavior. In some ways, the Little
Speaker 1: House books can read like an elegy for a lost world,
Speaker 1: and to.
Speaker 2: A degree, that's what they are.
Speaker 1: Pau moves his family out of the Big Woods because
Speaker 1: he complains that there is no game.
Speaker 2: The land has been stripped bare.
Speaker 5: In eighteen fifty, which is right after Minnesota Territory was
Speaker 5: created as a territory, the settler population was six thousand,
Speaker 5: seventy seven.
Speaker 2: That's environmental historian Chris Wells. Again.
Speaker 5: By eighteen fifty seven, the population swelled to more than
Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty thousand. The population doubled between eighteen
Speaker 5: sixty and eighteen seventy. Then it nearly doubled again by
Speaker 5: eighteen eighty to seven hundred and eighty thousand, and by
Speaker 5: eighteen ninety it was one point three million.
Speaker 1: This influx of settlers took an immediate toll on the
Speaker 1: land and the people who had long called it home.
Speaker 1: Prior to this population explosiona had literally been the land
Speaker 1: of plenty, looking.
Speaker 5: As far as you could see across the Great Plains,
Speaker 5: and have it just be covered with an undulating mass
Speaker 5: of bison as far as you could see. So those
Speaker 5: experiences of overwhelming numbers of a single animal or insect
Speaker 5: or bird were one of the ways that some people
Speaker 5: thought of what made America different and special compared to
Speaker 5: the old World Europe, and that super abundance was characteristic.
Speaker 1: That superabundance quickly disappeared much of it during Laura's lifetime.
Speaker 1: The extraordinary descriptions she provides of our natural surroundings in
Speaker 1: the books are actually a landscape that no longer exists,
Speaker 1: and while she doesn't say so specifically, all through the
Speaker 1: books is woven this sense of loss. In the final
Speaker 1: pages of By the Shores of Silver Lake, the last
Speaker 1: book to convey any feeling of wildness, Laura's youngest sister, Grace,
Speaker 1: gets lost on the prairie. Laura eventually finds her in
Speaker 1: a large, round hollow in the ground that's carpeted in violets.
Speaker 2: She later asked.
Speaker 1: Paw what the hollow was, quote, could it be a
Speaker 1: fairy ring? It isn't like a real place, truly. They
Speaker 1: aren't like ordinary violets. Ma naturally admonishes Laura for believing
Speaker 1: in fairies, but then pa explains, quote, you're right, Laura.
Speaker 2: Human hands didn't.
Speaker 1: Make that place, but your fairies were big, ugly brutes.
Speaker 1: That place is an old buffalo wallow. Now the buffalo
Speaker 1: are gone and grass grows over their wallows, grass and violets.
Speaker 6: I know that was so appealing to me, you know,
Speaker 6: Laura riding free on the prairie or the buffalo wallow
Speaker 6: with the crocuses.
Speaker 1: Here's Lizzie Skernick, writer and professor of children's literature at.
Speaker 4: NYU, and what's interesting is of course, when you say, oh,
Speaker 4: that's an old buffalo wallow, it's like, yeah, it's so
Speaker 4: old general Buffalo anymore.
Speaker 2: Paw never tells us why the buffalo are all gone.
Speaker 1: The buffalo are all gone because the US government had
Speaker 1: exterminated them in an attempt to remove the main food
Speaker 1: source of the Native Americans and make the land available
Speaker 1: for white settlement. In the late eighteen sixties, the government
Speaker 1: called for huntsmen to slaughter as many buffalo as they could.
Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill, the legendary Western figure, was so named because
Speaker 1: he claimed to have killed over four thousand buffalo in
Speaker 1: eighteen months. One US Army colonel was quoted as saying, quote,
Speaker 1: kill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an
Speaker 1: Indian gone end quote. Many of the hunters were equipped
Speaker 1: by the US Army with guns to do just that.
Speaker 1: Between eighteen forty and eighteen ninety, the population of buffalo
Speaker 1: in the US went from thirty five million to five
Speaker 1: hundred and forty one. The removal of food sources for
Speaker 1: Native Americans by the US government is a reoccurring event
Speaker 1: over the nineteenth century, and one that takes many forms.
Speaker 1: It is also the root cause of one of the
Speaker 1: most important conflicts between settlers and Native Americans in American history,
Speaker 1: one that for a long time has been left out
Speaker 1: of many history books. It's almost entirely left out of
Speaker 1: the Little House books.
Speaker 4: Multiple times, lor Ingalls Wilder will say Ma hated Indians.
Speaker 4: Maw hates Indians, but we never know why. There's a
Speaker 4: hint there, but we don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: That's Gwen Westerman, author of the book Minnesota Macoche, The
Speaker 1: Land of the Dakota.
Speaker 2: Doctor.
Speaker 1: Westerman is a professor of English literature at Minnesota State
Speaker 1: University in man Cato. In the book Little House on
Speaker 1: the Prairie, there is a scene where Ma is talking
Speaker 1: to the neighbor Missus Scott, the woman who voices the
Speaker 1: most racist lines in the Little House series.
Speaker 2: Missus Scott says.
Speaker 1: Quote, I can't forget the Minnesota Massacre. My pawn brothers
Speaker 1: went out with the rest of the settlers. At this point,
Speaker 1: Ma hushes Missus Scott, and when Laura later asks what
Speaker 1: is a massacre? Ma says it is something Laura would
Speaker 1: understand when she was older. The Minnesota Massacre is referring
Speaker 1: to the US Dakota War of eighteen sixty two, and
Speaker 1: whether or not Laura did understand it later, no further
Speaker 1: mention of it is made. The explanation behind all these
Speaker 1: hints lies in a place called Mancato, Minnesota.
Speaker 2: Man Cato is located eighty.
Speaker 1: Two miles south southwest of Minneapolis and seventy nine miles
Speaker 1: due west of Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Mankato is never mentioned
Speaker 1: in the books, but if you watched the Little House
Speaker 1: TV series, the name will likely be familiar to you.
Speaker 1: In the television show, it feels like someone is either
Speaker 1: going to or coming from man Cato every second episode.
Speaker 4: I also watched The Little House on the Prairie TV series,
Speaker 4: and what I knew was that when mon Pa wanted
Speaker 4: to get away from the kids, they went to man Cato.
Speaker 1: Last summer, Joe and Emily and I went to man Cato.
Speaker 1: We needed a stop over between Burr Oak, Iowa and
Speaker 1: just smet South Dakota, and I knew the name from
Speaker 1: the television show and thought it would be fun to
Speaker 1: be there.
Speaker 2: This is a cute little town. Yeah, that's not a Mabel. Well,
Speaker 2: they've got a pride flag in then the coffee Hag.
Speaker 2: We you've got to go to the coffee on my
Speaker 2: going through.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be one of the most important
Speaker 1: stops on our trip. Mancato, Minnesota, is the site of
Speaker 1: the largest mass execution in American history, the hanging of
Speaker 1: thirty eight Dakota men in eighteen sixty two, known as
Speaker 1: the Dakota thirty eight. President Abraham Lincoln mandated the execution
Speaker 1: as punishment for the US Dakota War of eighteen sixty two.
Speaker 4: The history of the Quota people in Minnesota is often
Speaker 4: condensed to one event, and that's the war in eighteen
Speaker 4: sixty two, and that is even condensed in a way
Speaker 4: that makes it sound like there was one event that
Speaker 4: caused it.
Speaker 2: This is doctor Gwen Westerman again.
Speaker 4: Sometimes that story is told as Dakota men were out
Speaker 4: hunting and took eggs from a farmer and there was
Speaker 4: an argument and there was shooting and the farmer was dead.
Speaker 4: It's not that simple. It's never that simple. This is
Speaker 4: decades of interactions, negotiations, and treaties that had legal, documented
Speaker 4: and implied obligations on both sides.
Speaker 1: Between eighteen thirty seven and eighteen fifty eight, the Eastern Dakota,
Speaker 1: who resided in what is now Minnesota signed a series
Speaker 1: of treaties with the US government, seating land in exchange
Speaker 1: for annual cash payments and other provisions. The eastern Dakota
Speaker 1: were then displaced and moved to a reservation that was
Speaker 1: twenty miles wide along either side of the Minnesota River.
Speaker 1: The Civil War resulted in the US government falling behind
Speaker 1: on their payments, and this, combined with the particularly harsh
Speaker 1: wind of eighteen sixty one, left the Dakota on the
Speaker 1: brink of starvation.
Speaker 4: It was a hard time in eighteen sixty two for
Speaker 4: everybody who lived here. There had been drought, there had
Speaker 4: been grasshopper infestations. Settlers were struggling and failing.
Speaker 9: They were moving.
Speaker 4: Away because of the difficult situation they were in, because
Speaker 4: of what was happening on the land for everybody, so
Speaker 4: failure to supply the promised goods and services of the
Speaker 4: eighteen fifty treaty, conditions of the land and the environment
Speaker 4: at the time, the tension among people because of these
Speaker 4: adverse conditions are all circumstances that led up to what
Speaker 4: happened in eighteen sixty two. So there is no single
Speaker 4: cause that we can point to you.
Speaker 1: The US Dakota War took place between August and December
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty two. We're going to go over the
Speaker 1: base facts of what happened, but as Gwen Westerman noted,
Speaker 1: the full history of the war is a long and
Speaker 1: complicated one, and we've included links to further resources in
Speaker 1: the show notes. On August seventeenth, a Dakota hunting party
Speaker 1: stole eggs from settlers in a town west of Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: This raid led to the deaths of five settlers. After
Speaker 1: extensive discussion, Little Crow, a chief of the Metawacatan Band
Speaker 1: of Dakota, decided.
Speaker 2: To continue the raids.
Speaker 1: Remember this was eighteen sixty two, the height of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, and because of this, the US government was
Speaker 1: slow to send troops to Minnesota. Instead, former Minnesota Governor
Speaker 1: Henry Sibley led a mostly volunteer militia against the Dakota.
Speaker 1: The following month, US forces defeated the Dakota. Three days
Speaker 1: after this defeat, the Dakota surrendered, releasing nearly three hundred captives.
Speaker 1: The Dakota were then held until military trials could take
Speaker 1: place in November. In the end, three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: eight settlers had been killed. In addition, to seventy seven
Speaker 1: soldiers in twenty nine volunteer militia. It is not known
Speaker 1: how many Dakota died. We do know what happened in
Speaker 1: the aftermath. Approximately two thousand Dakota were rounded up, whether
Speaker 1: they had participated in the war or not, including women
Speaker 1: and children, and they were then marched under harsh winter conditions,
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles away to Fort Snelling, where they were
Speaker 1: interned in a stockade under punishing conditions.
Speaker 2: One hundreds died.
Speaker 1: A military commission found three hundred and ninety two Dakota
Speaker 1: men guilty.
Speaker 2: Many of these trials lasted less than five minutes.
Speaker 1: Of the three hundred and ninety two men, President Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 1: wanting to PA's white settlers but concerned about further conflict
Speaker 1: that might divert resources from the Civil War, sentenced thirty
Speaker 1: nine Dakota men to death. One was reprieved, and thirty
Speaker 1: eight men were hanged. Two more were later captured and
Speaker 1: they were also hanged.
Speaker 5: The US Dakota were ended with the largest mass hanging
Speaker 5: in American history.
Speaker 2: Thirty eight people were hanged.
Speaker 5: President Abraham Lincoln signed the order to do it, but
Speaker 5: only after issuing a ton of pardons to reduce the
Speaker 5: number to the much smaller but still largest in US
Speaker 5: history thirty eight, and then several hundred more people died
Speaker 5: in sort of the non combatant camps that got set
Speaker 5: up through the winter.
Speaker 1: When we were in man Cato, we visited the site
Speaker 1: of the hanging. It is located on a sliver of
Speaker 1: pavement between lanes of traffic and railroad tracks. There's a
Speaker 1: buffalo statue at one end and at the other a
Speaker 1: large structure that looks like parchment with the poem commemorating
Speaker 1: the deaths of the war.
Speaker 10: This is the hanging spot. This is the spot where
Speaker 10: the thirty eight were hung at once. Like I said,
Speaker 10: it's actually the spots in the street between the Winter
Speaker 10: Warrior statue which is over there, and then this mound
Speaker 10: was kind of the in between, with that being the
Speaker 10: buffalo being the trying.
Speaker 11: And making it out.
Speaker 1: This is Dan Zielski, chair of the Mikado Metawauketan Association,
Speaker 1: which hosts educational events for non Dakota to learn more
Speaker 1: about Dakota culture, and.
Speaker 2: Can you explain to us what we're sitting in front of.
Speaker 10: This is a memorial to the thirty eight plus two
Speaker 10: who were hung. Now, as you can see, there are
Speaker 10: tobacco ties all over it. Those are sacred items that
Speaker 10: are made where they take the tobacco roll it up
Speaker 10: into a tie. As you see, the four basic colors
Speaker 10: that represent our Mancato boockets and people here are the black,
Speaker 10: the red, the yellow, and the white, and so you'll
Speaker 10: see those colors quite often around here.
Speaker 1: Before researching this podcast, I had never heard of the
Speaker 1: US Dakota War. But as usual, I wasn't sure if
Speaker 1: this was because I grew up in Canada or because
Speaker 1: it's not widely taught in the American education system.
Speaker 2: So once again I asked Joe.
Speaker 1: I think my impression, and one that's only grown stronger
Speaker 1: from the trip we did last summer, is that the
Speaker 1: American education system is very fractured and often localized to
Speaker 1: the state you grew up in. So did you learn
Speaker 1: about the US Dakota War when you were in school?
Speaker 8: I can tell you right off the bat that our
Speaker 8: Native American history was sorely lacking a lot of things
Speaker 8: were glossed over. Specific wars were glossed over, so we
Speaker 8: got kind of a bird's eye view. I didn't hear
Speaker 8: anything about the Dakota War until we got to man
Speaker 8: Cato on our road trip.
Speaker 1: And then it felt like to me that people who'd
Speaker 1: grown up in Minnesota were familiar with it, but that
Speaker 1: literally the further we got away from Minnesota, like as
Speaker 1: the miles ticked up, there was less and less familiarity
Speaker 1: with that as an historic event. Even though it was
Speaker 1: a huge historic event, it sort of doesn't factor into
Speaker 1: America's idea of itself, I guess no.
Speaker 8: I don't think a lot of things having to do
Speaker 8: with the westward expansion of the American colonies and the
Speaker 8: early American States factor into how America wants to mythologize itself.
Speaker 8: And I'd be really interested actually to talk to a
Speaker 8: current high school student about what they're being taught, because
Speaker 8: American history that was taught in the eighties, I'm sure
Speaker 8: is very different, I would hope is different than the
Speaker 8: American history that's being taught now. But what I've realized
Speaker 8: is that what I was taught in terms of American
Speaker 8: history was largely through the eyes of the people who
Speaker 8: had power and then were allowed to tell the stories.
Speaker 1: Does learning any of this make you reconsider your idea
Speaker 1: of the.
Speaker 8: Country working on this podcast with You has made me
Speaker 8: reconsider the idea of our country and the ideals that
Speaker 8: we were founded on, and it is definitely making me
Speaker 8: reconsider how we should and who should be telling American history.
Speaker 1: When I began asking around on our travels, it became
Speaker 1: clear that despite its national historic implications, and despite the
Speaker 1: fact it's the largest mass execution in US.
Speaker 2: History, the US Dakota.
Speaker 1: War is treated as local history outside of Minnesota.
Speaker 2: It's seemingly not well known at all.
Speaker 11: In Minnesota. You're in your I think it's sixth grade.
Speaker 11: You have to take a Minnesota history class, and I
Speaker 11: think it's a full semester long. So yes, we did
Speaker 11: learn about this, and then the man Cato massacre.
Speaker 9: It was horrible.
Speaker 1: That's the young college student who waited on us when
Speaker 1: we had dinner on our first night in man Cato.
Speaker 1: She told us that in man Cato, the memory of
Speaker 1: the war and the Dakota thirty eight is very well known.
Speaker 11: Recitation Park, it's a hot spot for protests in the city.
Speaker 11: So that's really cool down there. I actually started I
Speaker 11: tried to start a petition on our university, the Mankato University.
Speaker 11: There's a statue of Abraham Lincoln there, which I always
Speaker 11: always thought was a horrible taste. I mean he did
Speaker 11: a lot of great things, don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 11: it was the fact that he signed off on that
Speaker 11: and in man Cato where this mass.
Speaker 2: Hanging, the biggest in history, happened.
Speaker 11: So it just felt wrong and unethical to have the
Speaker 11: statue of film on the University Robert here.
Speaker 2: But did it go to to work?
Speaker 10: Did it go anywhere?
Speaker 11: No, it's they've been trying for years to get it
Speaker 11: out of there. I don't know what's They're just really
Speaker 11: dragging their toes.
Speaker 1: The US Dakota War resulted in the Dakota being entirely
Speaker 1: banished from Minnesota. In eighteen sixty three, the government voided
Speaker 1: all treaties with the Dakota, and that summer, the governor
Speaker 1: of Minnesota offered twenty five dollars bounties for the scalps
Speaker 1: of Dakota men. The remaining Dakota were moved to a
Speaker 1: reservation in what is now South Dakota. Take a minute
Speaker 1: and think about that two states in this country are
Speaker 1: named after Native American tribes that originated from elsewhere. Their
Speaker 1: presence in what is now North and South Dakota was
Speaker 1: only the result of their expulsion from their original home.
Speaker 1: More than one hundred and fifty years later, the US
Speaker 1: Dakota War still brings up complicated, passionate feelings in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: In some places, it continues to be referred to as
Speaker 1: a conflict or an uprising instead of a war until
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, when it was removed. The Hanging Monument,
Speaker 1: as it was known, marked the mass execution site, but
Speaker 1: had been erected by white residents and viewed as a
Speaker 1: celebration of the event. Even if you didn't learn about
Speaker 1: it in history class or realize the connection, we are
Speaker 1: still filling the legacy of that war now.
Speaker 2: The coverage of it by the media at.
Speaker 1: The time time, which focused almost exclusively on the accounts
Speaker 1: of white settlers, determined much of the narrative around quote dangerous,
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty Indians that we still see in culture today.
Speaker 12: The idea that is so predominant in the way that
Speaker 12: history is taught here is that Indians were bloodthirsty savages
Speaker 12: and they attacked those brave, courageous pioneers.
Speaker 2: That's doctor W. Reese again.
Speaker 1: You might remember we spoke to doctor Reese in the
Speaker 1: first episode, and that she runs a website called American
Speaker 1: Indians and Children's Literature.
Speaker 6: What is left out is those men who were engaged
Speaker 6: in that were dads, and you know, they had babies
Speaker 6: at home, and they had farms and they had crops,
Speaker 6: and all of their identity as people of a community
Speaker 6: is erased when we think of them as this just
Speaker 6: bloodthirsty savage.
Speaker 1: That narrative was embedded in the frontier shortly afterward and
Speaker 1: was still strong seven years old later when the Ingles
Speaker 1: arrived and the osage diminished reserve in eighteen seventy. In fact,
Speaker 1: maybe even more than the Civil War, the US dakode
Speaker 1: of War is the event that greatly affected Laura's childhood.
Speaker 1: It's so significant that Laura's biographer, Caroline Fraser chose to
Speaker 1: open her book Prairie Fires with it.
Speaker 9: It was just one of the bloodiest and most horrifying
Speaker 9: spectacles of American history, and certainly as the event that
Speaker 9: tipped off the whole next thirty years in terms of
Speaker 9: Indian policy and Indian removal and so forth. It was
Speaker 9: really quite shattering to figure out what that is. And
Speaker 9: I just thought I have to write about this because
Speaker 9: it puts her entire childhood, but also particularly the events
Speaker 9: that she covers in Little House on the Prairie, which
Speaker 9: is the most important of the series. I think in
Speaker 9: an entirely different light than I had ever understood before,
Speaker 9: and so I just felt like I have to open
Speaker 9: with this. This is in many ways, who she was,
Speaker 9: what her life was, what her mother's relationship, and fear,
Speaker 9: intense fear of Indians. That's what that was all about.
Speaker 9: That's where that was coming from.
Speaker 1: It's reasonable to assume this was the narrative that Ma
Speaker 1: was taking with her when pau relocated the family to
Speaker 1: a legally squat on osage land. That terror we sense
Speaker 1: in her is in part the terror of the experience
Speaker 1: that had been sold to white homesteaders on the frontier
Speaker 1: by the press for years, and it's a narrative that
Speaker 1: has persisted through many Hollywood westerns ever since. How much
Speaker 1: of all this context in history should have been included
Speaker 1: in the books is, I think up for debate. Laura
Speaker 1: did not sit down to write the history of America,
Speaker 1: which is not to suggest Laura is not responsible for
Speaker 1: the racist, violent content that is in the books, and
Speaker 1: there's plenty. Next week, we're stepping back into the little Houses.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a long, hard look at the
Speaker 1: problems of Laura and talk about what is in the
Speaker 1: books that has resulted in a lot of criticism and
Speaker 1: the renaming of a major children's literary award. There's more
Speaker 1: than you might think or even remember. That's next week
Speaker 1: on Wilder. Wilder is written and hosted by Me Glennis McNicol.
Speaker 1: Our story editors are Joe Piazza and Emily Meroanoff. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Emily Meranoff. Our producers are Mary do
Speaker 1: Shina Ozaki and Jessica Crinchich. Our associate producer is Lauren Philip.
Speaker 1: Sound design and mixing by Amanda ro Smith. Production help
Speaker 1: from a Boo Zafar and a Savory Sharma. Our scene
Speaker 1: in additional music was composed by Elise McCoy.
Speaker 2: We are executive produced by Joe Piazza, Nikki tor, Ali
Speaker 2: Perry and Me.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying Wilder, please consider rating and reviewing us
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. It actually helps us out quite a lot.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Gwen Westerman. Doctor Westerman is featured on
Speaker 1: an episode of This American Life about the US Dakota
Speaker 1: War titled Little War on the Prairie, and we encourage
Speaker 1: you to check it out.
Speaker 2: You'll find a link to it in our notes.
Speaker 1: Thanks to danzy Elski for showing us around Reconciliation Park
Speaker 1: in Mankato, and thank you to everyone at the hotel
Speaker 1: and restaurant in man Cato.
Speaker 2: Who shared their thoughts on this history with us. Thank you,
Speaker 2: as always to CDM Studios.
Speaker 1: Please see our show notes if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about the people we interviewed, the places we visited,
Speaker 1: the books we mentioned. You can also find our contact
Speaker 1: and go there if you want to write to us
Speaker 1: with your own thoughts and questions. Follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wilder Underscore podcast and on TikTok at Wilder Podcast,
Speaker 1: where you can see behind the scenes footage from all
Speaker 1: our travels.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.