ExclusiveLaura Ingalls Wilder: America’s Pioneer Storyteller

Welcome to American Legends. My name is Tiffany Brannon. Each culture has its legends, and that could be myths or different stories, but here in America, our greatest legends are the wonderful heroes who are right from our history pages. Now, some of these heroes are very famous and some are obscure, but each person deserves to be discovered because each man or woman stands as a great example of how we can be better Americans The first work of settling the new world of North America was done by a brave group of adventurers whom we now call the Pilgrims. From there, it took the valiant revolutionaries to declare independence from England. But from the fledgling 13 colonies to the sprawling 50-state empire we have now, we mainly can owe that work of expansion to a group of brave individuals whom we call the Pioneers. One of the best ways to understand what life was really like for these pioneers is to read the personal real-life accounts of people who lived through these experiences. Perhaps no one author captured this time period better than Laura Ingalls Wilder with her series Laura Ingalls was born in 1867. During her 90-year life, which spanned from a few years after the end of the American Civil War to a few years after the end of the Korean War, she lived through some of the most dramatic and change-filled times in American history. Countless wars, famines, financial collapses, political upheaval. Yet through it all, she remained dedicated to the spirit of America, which is the spirit of independence alongside personal devotion to ideals. Mrs. Wilder first turned her hand to writing in 1911 when she began writing a series of articles and even a column for several local newspapers and most notably a farm newspaper called the Missouri Ruralist. She wrote a weekly column called As the Farm Woman Thinks from 1911 through the mid-1920s. She also wrote for the St. Louis Star, the County Gentleman, and McCall's. In these publications, she expressed her wisdom and experience as a farm wife and a pioneer woman. She first would try her pen at writing her memoirs in 1929 through 1930 when she wrote the first draft of her memoirs, which she called Pioneer Girl. This was a single volume recounting her experiences growing up with her family and as a young farm wife. She received encouragement and some help from her only daughter, Rose, who was a published author and a more professional writer in San Francisco. With her daughter's encouragement, she collected these recollections of her own experiences and her beloved pa's stories, which she felt were worth remembering by future generations. When Rose helped her submit them, the publisher at first turned this draft down. You see, this was right after the crash of 1929, so as the Great Depression was just beginning, a lot of the publishers at this time were a little unsure to try out an unpublished novelist or memoirist at this point, wondering what kind of an audience there would be for such work. Although her childhood was several decades earlier, historical fiction or non-fiction wasn't as popular then as it is now, so publishers were afraid there wouldn't be much of an audience for it. However, he countered that there could be an audience if she rewrote the more serious memoir as a series of books for children, talking about her experiences but more from the perspective of a child, so that children living through modern-day challenges, such as those that they were facing during the Great Depression and during the Dust Bowl, would be very relatable. And he encouraged her throughout the process to exaggerate or at least focus on those details that would captivate children's imaginations, even the seemingly mundane ones, like how the pioneers made bullets and how they spun cloth, all those little details. Those would be the things that would bring the story to life, rather than just being dull, dry history. Thus, she set to work on making it into a series of books. At one point during this process, there was a draft called When Grandma Was a Little Girl, and although this title was never used on anything that was published, I think it gives a good example of the sort of mindset Laura had in writing this. She was in her 60s by the point that she wrote the Little House series, and although it might seem like that was so long earlier, that was the experience that most young people's grandparents had had, at least to some degree, even if they weren't pioneers. Those were the days, the post-Civil War days, as certainly there was much more comfort and modern technology on the East Coast, but people who lived in the Midwest and even the Far West had had to face such challenges as homesteading, riding in a covered wagon, farming land that had never really been tilled before, dealing with the claims of the local Indians as to who owned the land. All these were challenges which were foreign to people who'd either stayed back East or who hadn't heard the personal stories of their parents and grandparents. The first book in the series was Little House in the Big Woods. It was published in 1932, and it was an immediate hit. She received warm, wonderful letters from children all across the nation, as well as adults, who loved her stories and wanted to hear more about young Laura's experiences in childhood. As she continued writing and receiving this positive feedback, Laura recalled that she realized what a wonderful childhood she had had. Throughout these books, you see the spirit of her parents, Charles and Caroline Ingalls, who had a sort of hopeful optimism throughout all their challenges, a way of making the best out of everything. And when they couldn't make the best out of a situation, they would just try to keep their spirits up and maintain a positive attitude for their children and themselves. She followed this book with Farmer Boy in 1933, and this was talking about her husband Almanzo's childhood. Farmer Boy was the only book out of the series that didn't receive a Newbery award, but it too was well received. The third book in the series returned to the Ingalls family, immediately following the events of Little House in the Big Woods, with the book Little House on the Prairie. Now, I'm not sure why it was the title of the third book that became sort of the overarching title of the whole series. Perhaps it's because that one was particularly popular. It could be because that particular title had not only Little House in it, but the word prairie. And several books later there was another title, Little Town on the Prairie. And I think the use of the word prairie, like the big woods could be anywhere, but prairie is a distinctly American term which signifies the pioneers. There were eight books in all published during the 1930s and 40s, and after Little House on the Prairie, these included On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and The Happy Golden Years, the last of which was published in 1943. These Happy Golden Years ended with Laura's marriage to Almanzo Wilder, which was the beginning of the new chapter of her life. It is considered, though, that there's a ninth book in the series, and that is The First Four Years. This book was published in 1971, many years after Laura's death, and it was basically unedited, compiled from a rough first draft which she left in notes, and for whatever reason she hadn't completed it for publication. But that book talks about the first four years of the Wilders' marriage, and the title is a reference to a promise which Almanzo made to Laura, because she wasn't sure she wanted to be a farm wife, so he asked her to just try it out for three years. So this was about the first four years of their marriage, and the birth of their daughter, and then their son, who died within 12 days of his birth, so they really only had the one child who lived to adulthood. There are two other books that are sort of honorarily included in the series, and these are compilations of her letters and personal diary and journal writings. These are On the Way Home, published in 1962, and West from Home, published in 1974, both of which were published by HarperCollins. Perhaps part of the enduring popularity of this series is the fact that it has been adapted to the screen a few different times. The most famous and noteworthy adaptation was the long-running NBC television series, which ran from 1974 to 1983. As most screen adaptations do, this work took some liberties with the events of the books, but it was for the most part based on the real experiences recounted in the books, and it was made with a definite intention of respect and authenticity. Many people have commented on how remarkably similar to the real Laura Ingalls, the little girl who played that role, was in appearance. There are many, surprisingly many in fact, photographs of Laura from her early days, and of course photography had been around since the 1830s, but many poor people weren't able to take pictures. Nevertheless, there are some very clear pictures of Laura with her sisters as a little girl wearing patterned dresses, and then as a lovely young lady, and then as a young wife, and throughout her life, and then as a mature matron. But indeed, some have even wondered if that little girl could be related to Laura Ingalls because she looked so much like her. Now, the TV series was not the first adaptation to take a few creative liberties. The books themselves took some liberties from the actual facts of Laura's life. It's considered a semi-autobiographical fiction children's work, because it is for the most part based on her real experiences, but it was also made more palatable for children. The first draft of Pioneer Girl includes many passages and events that didn't make it into the Little House books, and it also includes some of the darker and more mature subject matter that she didn't want to include, not about her own life per se, but as a few incidents that happened with neighbors. The biggest change at the beginning of the series is Laura's age. During the first move of the family, which is recounted in Little House in the Big Woods, Laura in the books is five, but she was really only three when this happened. And according to a letter from the publisher, the reason this change was made was that he didn't think it was believable that a three-year-old would have such clear memories of what happened to her. Obviously, she did, although perhaps some of the recollections came from things that her parents had told her. But she was in fact three when that really happened, but he just felt it made more sense for her to be five. One incident in the Ingalls' life which is noteworthy for its absence is the year-long period when their parents ran a hotel. They were taking over for some friends, and for whatever reason, this is not mentioned in any of the Little House books. It's considered the dark period because it's not mentioned, although there is reference to some of the incidents in that time period in Pioneer Girl. Now, if you're curious about Pioneer Girl, it has been published now. And there's an annotated edition that includes a lot of notes from publishers, her daughter, other involved people, and that was published several years ago. So you can find that in hard copy. It's available on Amazon. So that's definitely a very interesting companion, you could say, to the Little House series. As to whether Laura intended for more than the original eight to be published in the series, I would say it's quite clear that she didn't, despite the first draft of the first four years, because the end of the text of these happy golden years says this is the end of the Little House series. So anything more that we can find is sort of icing on the cake. The first motivation for Laura's writing was to help the family finances, as her husband was, of course, a farmer at that point. But as they were nearing retirement age, it was a nice supplement to have the writing that she'd done for newspapers and magazines for years. But then the books brought in some very nice royalties and support for both of them. Her interest in literature began in her childhood when she would occasionally read some newspapers or magazines she could find. Her education throughout her childhood was somewhat spotty because of their moving around, but she did go to school as often as she could. And even when she and her sisters weren't able to go to school, their mother taught them at home because she herself had been a teacher. And when Laura was 15, she became certified to be a teacher herself, as that was one of the most common and respectable professions for a young lady at that time. She had been sewing and making some money from it for several years before that to help the family income. She only taught for a few years, though, because she was 18 when she married Almonzo Wilder and she didn't really want to be a teacher, so she was glad to escape having to be a teacher for too long by marrying him. I think many people look back on the pioneers, the prairies, the covered wagons, and without knowing that many of the facts, they just think of it as this horrible, torturous time full of death and misery, like the video game The Oregon Trail. But reading books written by people who actually were there, you see that it was a choice for the most part. They didn't have to be homesteaders and pioneers. They could have stayed back east and had a much more comfortable life. They had that spirit of adventure, especially Charles Ingalls, the father. He had that adventurer spirit and his wife and children were very happy to go along with him. And although Laura had some misgivings about being a farmer's wife, she and Almonzo chose to continue that homesteading life with which they were raised. She found creative ways to help her husband financially as well as spiritually, and it really wasn't until the next generation with her daughter Rose that there was any dissatisfaction with that life. As she said, she realized she'd had a wonderful childhood and she had a long, wonderful life. After surviving the trials of childhood, both she and her husband lived to the age of 90, showing that something in that tough upbringing had made them very resilient and just full of hope and joy throughout her life. In every picture, from her earliest childhood to as an older woman, there's a bright look in her eye and a spirit of joy. And I think you see that wonderful spirit of joy and courage in all her writings in the Little House series and beyond. In recent years, beyond the Little House series, the extra publications of letters, and The Pioneer Girl, you can find a few different collections such as the writings of Laura Ingalls or the letters. There are a few different books that have been published that include her other personal letters or different magazine articles she wrote, and I think reading these earlier works by her are a good example of what her writing style was before she got into the Little House series, and also some proof to refute the claim some have made that most of the was not from Laura herself, but that of her daughter. Although I'm sure Rose helped her, did some editing, and definitely encouraged her, Laura was a good writer herself, as we can see from all those magazine articles she wrote decades earlier. Through it all, through her pen and through the inspiration of her life, Laura Ingalls Wilder was an excellent example of a strong, determined American woman who helped found the newer portions of the nation, just as the patriots of the Revolutionary War had done in the previous century. Without the brave pioneers on the prairies like the Ingalls and the Wilders, America couldn't be the vast nation it is today. Thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you'll join me next time for more American Legends.