ad astra per aspera

This is all because I purchased a photo of John James Ingalls... It seems like every time there's a discussion of why the Charles Ingalls family went to (Kansas) Indian Territory in the late 1860s, someone mentions that Charles Ingalls must have heard from his cousin, Senator John J. Ingalls, that Osage Indian land was going to soon be available for settlement. In Little House on the Prairie (Chapter 4, "Prairie Day") LIW wrote: Pa had word from a man in Washington that the Indian Territory would be open to settlement soon. It might already be open to settlement. They could not know, because Washington was so far away. In the existing manuscripts, Pa calls them "durned politicians in Washington" and "blasted politicians in Washington," which you'll note doesn't refer to one man at all.

I figured I'd spend a bit of time seeing if John J. Ingalls was mentioned in anything I have. I looked at all four Pioneer Girl manuscripts today, and that little tidbit isn't in there. I didn't see it in the LIW-RWL letters, but I didn't read past Plum Creek letters. And of course I got bogged down reading newspaper accounts of the Sturgis Treaty and the plight of the Osages in Kansas and their removal.

Suddenly four hours have gone by.

One thing's obvious, though. If Charles Ingalls had word from "far off Washington" about the Osage land, it didn't come from John J. Ingalls, who wasn't elected to the United States Senate until 1873. He had earlier been a Kansas state senator, but he certainly wasn't living in Washington at the time the Ingallses were thinking about leaving Wisconsin for parts unknown. He was busy being quite wealthy and practicing law in Atchison.

It's hard to imagine that Charles Ingalls and John J. Ingalls even knew of each other. They weren't exactly "cousins," but fifth cousins once removed. Their common ancestor was seven generations back in Charles' lineage and six in John's.

The subject line above is the Kansas state motto, which was coined by John J. Ingalls. It means "to the stars with difficulty." (Btw, one of the early De Smet graduating classes selected that saying as their class motto.) I found a saying about John J. Ingalls I want to include here, but I'll leave it to you to research and figure out why it was said of him: Up was he stuck, and in the very upness of his stuckitude he fell.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:19 AM