the n-word
In "A Note on the Text" (page 11) of Stephen Hines' Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist, he writes: The n-word appears in one column because that is the word Laura Ingalls Wilder heard when she was reporting on the San Francisco exhibition of 1915. So far as I know, it did not reflect her own thinking about blacks of the time but only what some sailors said.

Let's all go play "find the n-word."

Well, Mr. Hines, so far as I know, Laura also used the n-word in Pioneer Girl and in multiple manuscripts for her "Little House" books. Almanzo used it in a letter to Rose. And I have heard from someone who was Mrs. Wilder's friend in Mansfield, that she was known to have used the n-word in speech.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:30 PM