big blue and juniata
In the decade before the Civil War, there was a Kansas wagon trail, the Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley route. The "road" through virgin territory came out from Leavenworth to what was the village of Winchester, to Osawkee village, to Half Dog Creek, and on to Indianola. It went on the Smith's ferry above the Kansas River, where one fork cut off south to the Sante Fe trail and the other ran on to Silver Lake (not that Silver Lake), on to the old Pottawatomie agency, to the Vermillion River, crossing due east of Louisville and up to the Big Blue River. From there it cut off southwest toward Fort Riley.

Juniata was a village on the Big Blue. It was settled in 1853 by Samuel Dyer, and the area reminded him of the Blue Juniata in Pennsylvania -- "The Blue Juniata" of which Caroline Ingalls sings with the fiddle in Little House on the Prairie. Is it possible that the Ingallses knew of Juniata and the Blue River in Kansas?

In a letter to daughter Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder said that "The Blue Juniata" was a favorite song of Pa's, and that he had written down the lyrics in a hand-made booklet of songs that she found two years after publication of Little House on the Prairie. Wilder wrote that what she remembered Pa singing weren't the lyrics used in LHOP.

Pa's booklet, however, has never been found.
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:57 PM