then she saw their stringy, bare, red-brown legs

Tracks of big moccasins and smaller moccasins were everywhere, and tracks of little bare toes. And over these tracks were tracks of rabbits and tracks of birds, and wolves' tracks. -Little House on the Prairie, Chapter 14, "Indian Camp"

Moccasins appear in more chapters of Farmer Boy than Little House on the Prairie, but the one moccasin does double duty on my Chistmas tree. It was a gift, and I hope its mate is hanging on a "Little House" tree in the Pacific Northwest.

Webster says that a moccasin is "a shoe or cover for the foot, made of deerskin or other soft leather, without a sole, and ornamented on the upper side; the customary shoe worn by the American Indians. Almanzo Wilder wears moccasins "exactly like the moccasins the Indians wore" (Farmer Boy, Chapter 1, "School Days") - not because he was an Indian, but because he "was a little boy." Almanzo wore moccasins all the way to Chapter 23, and it seems like Mother Wilder would have been happier with another pair of moccasins for Almanzo than with the boots Father Wilder had the cobbler make.

In Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder describes seeing Indians wearing both plain and beaded moccasins. There are many patterns for making moccasins online; an ornament would be good practice! I don't know a thing about beading moccasins.... yet.
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:32 PM