oh to be thrown off the land by general sherman!

Headquarters, Army of the United States
Washington, D.C., August 6, 1870

General: The Secretary of the Interior has given notice that the matter of difficulty between the Osages and the white settlers on their reservation will probably be settled without difficulty, but that it is reported other squatters manifest a purpose to go on south of the Kansas border and take up claims within the Indian Territory next adjoining. He says the boundary line is well known.

The matter was up before the cabinet yesterday, and it was concluded that any trespass or intrusion must be promptly and forcibly met. You had better send a cavalry force down on the line and give notice that you have positive orders to "protect the Indian Territory from unauthorized settlers and squatters," and require the officer in command promptly to remove any such as he may find across the south boundary of Kansas, within the limits of what is known as the Indian Territory.

I have the honor to be your obedient servant,
W.T. Sherman, General

Headquarters Post Southeastern Kansas
Montgomery County, Kansas, August 26, 1870

The Government has determined to remove all settlers and invaders in the Indian Territory, and to execute the treaty with the Cherokees of 1866. By article 27, "all persons not in the military service of the United States, nor citizens of the Cherokee Nation, are prohibited from coming into the same, or remaining on the same."

All such settlers are hereby summoned to quit the limits of the Indian Territory in the shortest possible time, and all immigrants are forbidden to enter the same on penalty of removal by force.

By order:
J.S. Poland
Captain Sixth Infantry, Commanding Post.

- posted by pioneergirl at 11:58 PM

 
edmund mason

This gentleman is one of the more extensive farmers in Rutland township, where he settled, in 1869, on a portion of section 36. By careful management and close attention to business, he has, since that time, accumulated a large farm property, consisting of seven hundred and ninety acres, which he devotes, largely, to the raising of stock.

Devonshire, England, is the place of birth of Edmund Mason, the year being 1846. He was a son of Thomas and Johanna Mason. These parents passed their lives in the old country, never having removed to America. A brother of our subject, John Mason, came to this country in 1856. Edmund Mason remailed in England until 1867. Four years later, a younger brother, James, came over. These three brothers, with another, Henry, were the only members of the family who left England.

Reared to farm life, Mr. Mason found himself in possession of knowledge which has stood him in good stead in the country to which he emigrated. He came immediately to Montgomery County and settled on the quarter section where he now resides. He was the first settler in this part of the township, and now he is one of the largest land owners in the county. - History of Montgomery County, Kansas, 1903

Edmund Mason has long been believed to be the inspiration for the Little House on the Prairie character, Mr. Edwards. With the exception of various Osage Indians, Mr. Edwards, along with Mr. and Mrs. Scott and Dr. Tan, are the only non-family members in the book. Laura Ingalls Wilder describes Mr. Edwards as being "lean and tall and brown.... He told Laura he was a wildcat from Tennessee," (Chapter 5), but Edmund Mason had only recently arrived from England. Maybe Laura heard Devonshire and remembered Tennessee? It's always possible that Mr. Mason had come to Kansas via Tennessee.

That Laura was confused over the names of other squatters in Indian Territory is obvious. Maybe the Ingalls family talked about their stay there; maybe they didn't. At any rate, it's not like Laura could ask anyone anything while working on Pioneer Girl or her Indian juvenile. Ma, Pa, and Mary were dead. Carrie had been born in Kansas and was an infant when the family left.

Some of the stories connected to Mr. Edwards in Little House on the Prairie are attributed to other characters in Pioneer Girl or in one of the (at least) five complete manuscripts or fragments of LHOP, depending on how you arrange the surviving pages. In Pioneer Girl, it's Mr. Brown who brings the Christmas gifts; Pa goes to check on the Robertsons when he hears a scream in the night, and the doctor is not named. In one (1) of the manuscripts (told from Mary's point of view, not Laura's), both Mr. Thompson and a neighbor man help build the cabin.

In the second version (2), Mr. Thompson helps with the cabin. Mr. Edwards brings the Christmas presents. There are stories about John Turner and Jones, and two bachelors, Tom and Dick.

In the third version (3), Mr. and Mrs. Scott are present, and Mr. Edwards brings the Christmas presents. He also tells the family that there are two bachelors living nearby - John Turner and Jones - and mentions a Mr. Thompson. Pa tells another story about two men named Tom and Dick.

In the fourth version (4), Mr. Edwards helps with the cabin and Mr. and Mrs. Scott are the neighbors. As Mr. Scott helps Pa dig the well, he tells about Mr. and Mrs. Thompson's well, and their being helped by Mr. Stover. Mr. Thompson dies from the gas in the well. Carrie's birth is included, and Mrs. Scott helps during the birth. Mr. Edwards brings the Christmas presents, and there are stories about Sam Turner, Bill Jones, and Mrs. Thompson's house. Pa tells another story about Tom and John.

The fifth version (5) includes Mr. Edwards. Mr. Scott tells of another well-digging in which Edwards and Stover are digging and Mr. Edwards dies. In this version, the Ingalls family doesn't leave Indian Territory because of the possibility that soldiers will come remove them from the land, but because Pa receives a letter from Mr. Johnson, the man who bought the Big Woods cabin, asking Pa to return and take it over.

It's interesting to note that it was a Mr. Johnson who Charles Ingalls bought the Chariton County (Missouri) land from, and who bought it back from him. There are Scotts, Joneses, Thompsons, Turners, brothers and bachelors and men from Tennessee on the 1870 Montgomery County census. And on several censuses over the years, Edmund Mason is listed as... you guessed it: Edward.
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:30 PM

 
"where are the indian camps?"

In Little House on the Prairie (Chapter 9, "A Fire on the Hearth"), Laura and Mary go to Walnut Creek with Pa when he goes to dig rocks to use in building the fireplace. Laura asks where the Indian camps are located, and while Pa had seen them among the bluffs, he was too busy to show the girls that day.

The closest Indian camp to the Ingallses' squatting place in Section 36 was two miles away, on the other side of Onion Creek. There were a number of other camps dotting the landscape in Montgomery County: two on the Elk River, five along the Verdigris River, one southeast of the cabin on Onion Creek. With the exception of the camp southeast of the cabin on Onion Creek - about ten miles away - all were on the other side of "the water" from the Ingalls cabin. It is highly unlikely that Mary and Laura walked to see this camp, but is it true that they crossed the creek to visit the camp closest to them? If they indeed visited in August, then perhaps the creek was barely a trickle at the time.

In Little House on the Prairie, no distinction is made between the different "camps" or clans/bands of Indians among the bluffs; they were all called Osage Indians by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The different physical divisions of the Osages arose from the flood tradition, or story that during a sudden flood in the early days, the people were forced to flee to safety. Although there was some mixing of the two divisions recognized at the time, due to panic, five distinct physical divisions of the Osage were created. It's too much to go into here (read Louis Burn's Osage Indians Bands and Clans), but it was a village camp of Claremore's band of the Osage who were the closest to the Ingallses.

A tidbit of interest about the Claremore band. The chief was also the head chief of the Osage of the Oaks (Arkansas band). His gentile name was given as Gra moie: Gra moie means "Passing or moving hawk," although sometimes it is given as "Walking Eagle." He was also said to be called "Arrow Going Home," which was pronounced like Clermont in French, but sounded more like Claremore to English speakers, hence the name. Claremore I was an older brother of Chief White Hair. Their sister married the Kansas Chief White Plume and they were the great grandparents of Charles Curtis who was Vice President under Herbert Hoover. (While already a great story, think how much more fun it would be if the Vice President had spelled his name Kurtis!)

The image above shows the Little House on the Prairie cabin site in relation to the Claremore camp site. I've added "Mr. Edwards'" cabin, or the site of Ed Mason's later claim and the stone building foundation pictured in William Anderson's LIW Country. I also added (faint yellow dashes) the "Osage Indian Trail" location from the 1880 map included in Eileen Charbo's A Doctor Fetched By The Family Dog. This trail didn't exist at the time the Ingallses were there; this is actually what was called the "New Osage Trace," and was established in 1871 (after removal) so the Indians could visit and trade at Osage Mission, which is now St. Paul, Kansas.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:01 AM

 
laura ingalls wilder's life story: the 8-track
Laura Ingalls Wilder: A photographic story of a life, by Tanya Lee Stone

Laura Ingalls Wilder's life story is the stuff that novels are made of. While her homesteader family moved across the American frontier, young Laura took it all in with a keen eye for scenes and characters, and a frank and friendly disposition that won her friends in every new town. A natural storyteller, Laura later entertained her daughter with tales from her childhood.

Those same stories would develop into the Little House novels, enjoyed by generations of Americans. Her books were fiction... but the true story of Laura's life is just as amazing...

More than 100 photographs show famous figures in living color... Sidebars offer in-depth historical context... A visual timeline tells the story at a glance...

This is such a beautiful book. It's a cute size. There's a photograph or two on every page, and the text weaves around and about. There are little boxes and blurbs to catch your attention. There's just enough color along with the greens and blues and browns suggestive of the prairie. As soon as I received this LIW bio in the mail, I started emailing people and saying they really ought to buy it too. It's laid out so well and it's so pretty, I said.

Then I read it. While there's nothing that the casual Laura Ingalls Wilder fan might pick up on, a something or two still niggles at me from every page. After reading it through a second and a third time, I think I know what bothers me. I simply don't feel like the author was comfortable with her material. Does she even love Laura Ingalls Wilder?

There are plenty of citations and a bibliography; it's paragraph after paragraph that comes from another biography. But the problem is that while a lot of the Stone biography obviously references Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pioneer Girl manuscript, it's not cited or even listed in the bibliography (nor are any of the "Little House" books except for On the Way Home and Little House Traveler). For someone who quoted Pioneer Girl so heavily, did she even read it for herself?

If you've read Zochert's LIW bio (and who hasn't?), you know that he relied heavily on Pioneer Girl for "facts". Well, Stone relies heavily on Zochert, and even heavier on Pamela Smith Hill's Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life. And where Stone credits Smith Hill, Smith Hill might in turn credit Ann Romines, who might have credited William Anderson. Sometimes I think it might be possible to get a stack of LIW bios and follow the "citation circle" in a big old 8-track loop in which everybody quotes everybody else but never has any primary research of their own to report. Isn't it time to stop and figure out "who said it first" and check for holes in our LIW common knowledge?

How do you rate LIW bios, anyway? One corn, two corns, three corns? This one is so pretty, I'd be tempted to give it four corns anyway. Too bad that "four don't go fur."
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:30 PM

 
behind door number one

With the saw he sawed logs the right length for a door. He sawed shorter lengths for cross-pieces. Then with the ax he split the logs into slabs, and smoothed them nicely. He laid the long slabs together on the ground and placed the shorter slabs across them. Then with the auger he bored holes through the cross-pieces into the long slabs. Into every hole he drove a wooden peg that fitted tightly. That made the door. - Little House on the Prairie, Chapter 8, "Two Stout Doors"

I've been not working on my log cabin dollhouse lately, but tonight I decided to see if I could make a door for it, following Laura Ingalls Wilder's text in Little House on the Prairie. I'm using apple wood for the cabin, so I decided to use it for the door, too. I haven't a clue if apple is good or bad for this sort of thing. I'm no carpenter, but I have plenty of seasoned apple branches, so apple it is. Nothing has split yet, so that's good.

I cheated and used a table saw to saw the "planks" and I used a drill instead of an auger, and I used wood glue and sandpaper. On the door, you can still see blade marks from the saw, but I like them, so they might not get sanded out.

I'm not quite sure how to peg the leather hinges (I'm going to use pieces from an old belt) to the frame, and since there isn't a frame yet, I've got time to ask about that. I didn't realize until I came upstairs that the Garth Williams illustration shows three cross-pieces, so I may add another one tomorrow.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:30 PM

 
the mule and the man

The mule- he is a gentle beast;
      And so is man.
He's satisfied to be the least;
      And so is man.
Like man, he may be taught some tricks;
He does his work from 8 to 6;
The mule- when he gets mad, he kicks;
      And so does man.

The mule- he has a load to pull;
      And so has man.
He's happiest when he is full;
      And so is man.
Like man he holds a patient poise,
And when his work's done will rejoice.
The mule- he likes to hear his voice;
      And so does man.

The mule- he has his faults, 'tis true;
      And so has man.
He does some things he should not do;
      And so does man.
Like man, he doesn't yearn for style,
But wants contentment all the while.
The mule- he has a lovely smile;
      And so has man.

The mule is sometimes kind and good;
      And so is man.
He eats all kinds of breakfast food;
      And so does man.
Like man, he balks at gaudy dress
Like all outlandish foolishness;
The mule's accused of mulishness;
      And so is man.
               -Missouri Ruralist, 1911
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:30 PM

 
first, catch your rabbit

So begins an 1870 recipe for rabbit stew, and it was rabbit stew that Laura and Mary ate for breakfast on the day they moved into the cabin on the high prairie in Little House on the Prairie (see Chapter 6). This was the leftover rabbit stew with white-flour dumplings Ma made when Mr. Edwards stayed for supper.

Also called a fricassee, the rabbit was stewed in a thin white sauce, made of white flour and water. After killing and bleeding, the rabbit was dressed and washed, then cut into pieces. Dressing a rabbit doesn't mean to put it in a Benjamin Bunny coat and hat, but to prepare it for cooking, or in this case, to remove the guts, head, skin, and legs (a dressed rabbit will weigh about half what it did when alive), and to cut the meat into pieces, if desired. If you're not squeamish, know that your meat was alive before it showed up in your grocer's case all nicely wrapped in plastic, and you want to learn how to dress a rabbit, go HERE. Don't forget to salt the skin and peg it on a board to dry. It will make a warm fur cap for some little girl to wear next winter.

To make Caroline Ingalls' rabbit stew with white-flour dumplings, sprinkle the pieces (best if they have been soaking in salted water overnight) with salt and pepper, and then dredge them in flour. Brown in fat, cover with boiling water, and cook slowly until tender. This can take up to three hours. Remove the meat from the broth, and thicken broth with one tablespoon of flour per cup of broth (be sure you make plenty of gravy). Boil for a minute or two, then add dumplings, cover, and allow to steam for about twenty minutes. Pour dumplings and gravy over meat on a serving platter.

To make dumplings, Sift 2 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cut in 2 tablespoons fat and add an egg beaten in a cup of milk. Drop by spoonfuls into boiling gravy and cook.

If you have a copy of Barbara Walker's Little House Cookbook (HarperCollins), there is a quite detailed recipe for stewed rabbit beginning on page 37. As Walker says in her cookbook, this is a recipe that has appeared many times in various forms, and hers is basically the same as the one above, taken from a 1920 Farm Bulletin.

Did you know that if you eat nothing but rabbit, you will die? Don't believe it? Check THIS out. (And prepare to laugh!)
- posted by pioneergirl at 10:30 PM

 
the ringing of an ax which was not Pa's
At the beginning of Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder writes that one of the reasons they are heading to the Indian Territory is that now, quite often in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, they hear "the ringing of an ax which was not Pa's ax." (Chapter 1) In Little House in the Big Woods, living where "as far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month.... there were no people" (Chapter 1), the only "neighbors" mentioned in the entire book are the Huleatts and the Petersons. Uncle Henry's family, although actually living on land adjoining the Ingallses' own, do not seem close: Uncle Henry always arrives by "riding out of the woods."

Why, then, are the Ingallses so excited to find that they have neighbors in Indian Territory? It's grand to have Mr. Edwards help with the cabin building; it's such a help to have Mr. Scott help dig the well. Settlers are moving in all up and down both sides of the creek, including two bachelors (Sam Turner and Bill Jones in one of the manuscripts, and there's also a Mr. Thompson mentioned). Already you have as many households as mentioned in the Big Woods. The family of five? Surely they must be settling close by as well. Isn't this what the Ingallses came to Indian Territory to get away from?

The Ingallses come to get away from too many people, yet people start showing up. All those deer and antelope and elk Pa is thrilled to discover? Of course they'll be gone soon, and surely he knows that. And it's always about now when reading Little House on the Prairie that I start to feel a little uncomfortable. They have come to Indian Territory - no two ways about is - as squatters.

Then there are the Indians. Sure, Laura admires them and Pa wants to live in peace with them, and of course you can make a case that the family admires and respects the Indians, but surely he believes, as Mrs. Scott does, that "Treaties or no treaties, the land belongs to folks that'll farm it. That's only common sense and justice."

In Chapter 18, Pa even tells Laura - who even at her young age clearly sees something wrong with the logic and tried to question him about it - that "when white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on... We get the best land because we get here first and take our pick."

And, as shown in Waziyatawin Angela Cavender Wilson's "Burning Down the House: Laura Ingalls Wilder and American Colonialism" (Chapter 3 of Unlearning the Language of Conquest: Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America, edited by Donald Trent Jacobs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), while the Ingallses feel justified in taking Osage land, they don't like it one bit when two Indians come into their cabin and made signs for Ma to feed them. (Chapter 11)

Take a minute and visit amazon.com and read the chapter about LHOP in Jacobs' book (currently available as part of the preview). Although it would have been nice if Wilson had studied the actual history of the Ingalls family instead of relying on what's written in Little House on the Prairie (she cites the "there were no settlers" passage; does she realize that Wilder actually wrote that "there were no people"?), it's always good to hear the other side of the story.

Is Little House on the Prairie racist? Of course it is. But for some strange reason, we try to make it okay that Wilder dehumanizes Indians because we love her so much. And the book can't be banned, because how else could we also point out that Wilder can't be racist because, look, there's a black doctor?
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:30 PM

 
coasting right along

Martha Stewart's "Craft of the Day" today was THIS twig trivet. Since there's not a darn thing you can't tweak and think of in terms of Laura Ingalls Wilder and "Little House" - why not make a cottonwood twig trivet, or a coaster? If you've been to De Smet, you know you've got a baggie full of cottonwood twigs lying around the house somewhere; better to use them as a resting place for your morning cup of coffee or tea (which is, of course, a man's drink in cold weather).

That got me thinking of other LH coaster ideas, and I came up with a couple. My favorite is the "Crocheted Rag Rug" coaster. In These Happy Golden Years (Chapter 33), there's a crocheted rag rug on the floor in Reverend Brown's sitting room; Laura notices it when she and Almanzo are there to be married. Crocheting a rag rug is both time-consuming and expensive unless you happen to have a really, really large rag bag, but a coaster? A few scraps and fifteen to thirty minutes, tops, if you're already a crocheter.

Cut cotton fabric into 1-1/2 inch strips, and sew the strips together into one long piece. The 4-1/2 inch square coaster I made took 18 strips that were each about 20 inches long. I used some retro fabric I bought at a quilt show in Walnut Grove over ten years ago (there's your connection). They were in a box right next to my baggies of rocks and twigs.

I used a size K crochet hook, but I have a larger one that I usually use for rag crochet; I just wanted this work to be as tight as possible. I cast on 11 and crocheted 8 rows in single crochet; make sure you tuck raw edges to the center of the strip as you work. Weave ends and tack them in place. It's reversible, machine washable and dryable.

How about a "Pepin Pebbles" coaster? Using epoxy or a hot glue gun, attach pepples in rows to a square piece of heavy clear plastic. Let dry. Using a mat knife or small scissors, cut plastic as close to pebbles as possible. Probably not the best place to rest the good willow-ware, but awfully cute.

I'll probably be thinking of LH coaster/trivet ideas all night. Similar to the twig idea, how about using LH site pencils sawed to length? Corncobs glued together, with one of the inside ones wrapped in a handkerchief? Wood burned with checkerboard squares? Braided straw circle, no crown? Red checked tablecloth square? Sweet Williams pressed between two layers of glass? Mini quilts? Fake fur cut in pelt shapes?

A square of slate? You can write your name on it with a slate pencil. Can you use a slate pencil for a swizzle stick, I wonder?
- posted by pioneergirl at 7:59 PM

 
it isn't good manners to sing at table

It's a tiny bird in the weed-tops, swinging and singing in a tiny voice. Listen!

From its winter home in South America, the dickcissel will be arriving in North America soon. Flying in small groups, many will pass through the Mississippi Valley on their way to Iowa; others will head to Kansas and Nebraska; some will make it farther. Most will seek meadows, cornfields, and open prairie, and although farmers might find them a pest and a nuisance, the dickie-birds will stop to rear their young, leaving before the first sign of cold weather to head back to their seasonal home. At one time, dickcissels were more numerous than any bird on the prairie, but their numbers went through a sharp decline thirty or so years ago, and while populations have stabilized, they have not recovered. As their numbers declined, so did their range; dickcissels have all but abandoned the east coast where they were once regular visitors.

Sometimes called the "black-throated bunting" or the "little field lark" the dickcissel isn't really a lark, but a finch. With its yellow breast and black throat markings, they do look similar to the meadowlark, but are much smaller in size, no more than 6 inches from tail to beak. In one of the existing drafts of Little House on the Prairie, Mary Ingalls commented that the dickcissel's "name was bigger than the bird." And, as Wilder wrote in the published version (Chapter 4, "Prairie Day"), dickcissels and meadowlarks are often seen in the same area. Male dickcissels have dingy white underparts; females have neither yellow breasts nor black throats, and their underparts are white and streaked with brown.

The dickcissel's song is short and simple ("dick dick cissel cissel"), even considered weak, and it grows monotonous when young birds are in the nest, because the male perches on a grass stem close by (the nests are messy grass cups on the ground or in clumps of weeds) and continuously warns other birds to stay away. Males no doubt are just boasting, since they can mate with 8 or more females in a season. Eggs are pale blue, and usually four or five are laid in a season. The eggs are a little over a half inch in length.

If the Ingallses really did hear dickcissels upon their arrival in Indian Territory, and those dickcissels were nesting, this pretty much puts a time-stamp on it as being from June to August, with August being quite late even for a second hatch of the season. Eggs are incubated for 12 to 15 days, and the fledglings remain in the nest for an average of 26 days. Females feed the fledglings in the vicinity of the nest for about two more weeks, so 50-54 days are needed for each hatching, and females sometimes attempt two broods per year.

I admit that I'm out of my research comfort zone as far as Little House on the Prairie is concerned, but luckily that's the area of expertise of my research partner, Penny Linsenmayer. In her "Kansas Settlers on the Osage Diminished Reserve: A Study of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie" (Kansas History, Autumn 2001 -- you can read her article in its entirety HERE), Penny writes that it is probable that the Ingallses settled in Kansas sometime in September or October 1869, when the Osage Indians were off on their fall buffalo hunt. The Ingallses were definitely in Chariton County (Missouri) in late August, because Charles Ingalls signed a Power of Attorney there on August 26.

There's not much overlap of Ingallses and dickcissels nesting in Indian Territory, with the Ingallses there after August 26, and August being really late for nest activity anyway.

Laura Ingalls Wilder may have mentioned dickcissel nests in Little House on the Prairie, but there were no nests mentioned in any of the existing drafts, just birds. Although Mary and Laura are said to touch nests they find in the grass, and those nests are full of hungry babies (see Chapter 10), there's no suggestion that these nests belong to dickcissels. Note that the dickie-birds are still everywhere when Laura and Mary go with Pa to get mud for the fireplace, and this is before cold weather sets in and dickcissels would have headed south.

Were there still dickie-birds in Montgomery County in September - October 1869, or was Laura fudging about the birds? Oh well, it's not like she remembered them, is it? She was too young. ;-)
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:30 PM

 
scour me

The history of knives and forks provided an interesting essay for you to read another day, but suffice it to say that while in Indian Territory, Pa, Ma, Mary, and Laura each had a steel knife and fork with a bone handle; they were not eating with their fingers or from sticks or the tip of a knife. There was not a spoon in sight, however (in real life, Carrie wasn't old enough to start banging one), but the rounded end of the knife above served two purposes: it could be used as a spoon if you were quick enough, and if you dropped it, you didn't run the risk of stabbing your foot.

Common knives were made of steel, but the best table knives were made of shear steel, and were stamped as such. The tang, or part that goes into the handle, was made of iron and welded to a steel blade, which was heated red-hot and plunged into cold water to harden it. Afterwards, it was tempered to a blue color, then ground. Forks were generally a different branch of manufacture than knives. The prongs were formed by a stamp that cut them out, then they were filed and hardened and tempered. Handle-less forks were purchased from fork-makers by the manufacturers of table knives, who put them into handles.

Handles were made of wood, ivory, horn, silver plate, silver, etc. Bone handles, such as the Ingallses and Wilders owned, were made from the shank bone of the ox. Some bone handles were dyed green because the bone didn't keep its color very long. Bone handles were typically two pieces that were riveted to the tang. The blade of all table knives were not to touch the table when laid flat upon it, and were balanced accordingly.

Steel, being made of iron, would rust, and cutlery made from steel had to be cleaned. In Farmer Boy, Almanzo Wilder scoured the steel knives and forks with a scouring-brick. While a scouring brick might be an actual brick such as used in construction, they were more often pieces of sandstone or specially fired and patented Bath Bricks, made from the mud of the Parrot River in Bridgwater, Somerset, England (with a little sand and clay added). Bath bricks were exported to America, where they were available in literally every general store. As Laura wrote and had Almanzo demonstrated in Farmer Boy, a bit of the brick was scraped off with the back of a knife, and the dust was mixed with water or oil. This was rubbed vigorously on the blade, usually with a piece of leather. After the rust was removed, all traces of brick dust also had to be removed, because it would eat into the steel if left in place too long. Wash the steel and the vicious cycle of rust and removal began again.

One "trick of the trade" when polishing knives was to hold two knives in one hand, back to back, and rub two sides at once. The blades were then flipped to scour the other sides.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:45 PM

 
to boldly go
I am taking the night off to watch a great deal of Star Trek TNG. Even a bad episode of Star Trek is better than crossing that creek again.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:59 PM

 
crossing the ice

The Ingalls and Quiner families did not depart for Missouri (remember that they went there prior to heading on to Indian Territory) immediately after selling their property to Gustaf Gustafson in late April 1868. Based on local records, both Charles Ingalls and Henry Quiner were still residing in the Pepin County vicinity into the late autumn of 1868, and because it is unlikely that they would set out for the West with their families at the onset of the winter months, they probably did not leave Wisconsin until late winter or early spring 1869.

According to newspaper records, Lake Pepin was typically iced over and stable enough for ice crossings by wagon from approximately the middle of December through mid-to-late March.

Lake Pepin was formed about 12,000 years ago from the glacial Lake Agassiz. Several thousand years later, the water decreased as the glacier receded and the water began flowing in other directions. About 9,500 years ago sand, which was deposited at the Chippewa River delta where it joined the Mississippi River, acted as a dam and Lake Pepin was formed. At one time the Lake extended to present St. Paul, Minnesota, but as the flow of water decreased and more sediment was deposited it gradually assumed its present day size of 1 to 2.5 miles wide and 22 miles long. The surface of the lake is 644 feet above sea level and the tops of the surrounding bluffs are about 450feet above the level of the lake.

If the families had not chosen to cross Lake Pepin over the ice in late winter (with the attendant risks of an ice crossing), they would have been required to pay a fee to cross by ferry. Ferry rates would have been in the range of $.50 - $2.00 for a loaded two-horse wagon, and sometimes there was an additional charge of $.10 or more per passenger in the wagon.

In the late 1860s, the major ferry crossing from Pepin and Pierce Counties to Minnesota was between Stockholm and Lake City. Many ferries didn't make direct trips across Lake Pepin, but traveled between villages on one side before crossing, usually at Maiden Rock (north of Stockholm), Stockholm, or Reads Landing (on the Minnesota side). Larger steam or sail ferries were in direct competition with numerous independent ferries, with routes and dates of operation as varied as the weather and cargo they carried.

It's interesting to note that in the manuscript for Little House on the Prairie, it is Mary Ingalls, not Laura, who is the protagonist. It is Mary, at age five, who frets and fusses about being tired, and Mary who tattles to Pa that she, no wait, it was Laura who peeked when told not to. And it's Mary who the great star winks at.

"Stay in Laura's head!" was the best advice Rose Wilder Lane ever gave her mother.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
chew on this
One thing that I sometimes wish hadn't been edited out of Farmer Boy is Almanzo Wilder chewing on the balsam gum:

The hot sun shone on the two big balsam trees that stood one on each side of the front gate. Its heat drew some of the sap out of the trunks of the trees and it formed in small, bright lumps of gum here and there. The gum was a clear, pale yellow and it looked so good that Almanzo could not resist breaking off the lumps and chewing them whenever he passed the trees. And always he was surprised to find that the gum was very bitter and not good at all. But he still ate it. Mother said she thought he did it just to get his clothes all over pitch.

The Farmer Boy manuscript doesn't end with, well, how the book ends. The manuscript includes the story of the Wilders deciding to move to Minnesota, and one of the endings has Mother calling to Almanzo ("Where be you?"), and Almanzo, who has made everyone wait on him, comes from behind the balsam tree. The sun had not been "hot enough to draw the least, little drop of sap and Almanzo went away without a last chew of the bitter balsam gum." (page 197, end of tablet)

Of course, the balsam and spruce are both mentioned in Farmer Boy, and it would have been even better if Almanzo had chewed spruce gum, because then the Wilder Homestead could have sold THIS.

The major difference in the ending of the manuscript - as I've blogged before - is that Mr. Paddock isn't the wagon maker, he's the hardware store owner, and he doesn't want Almanzo to apprentice as a wheelwright, but as a tinsmith. And even though Almanzo didn't turn out to be a tinsmith, there are enough tin items mentioned in Farmer Boy to keep a LH collector very happy: tin pails, and pans, and basins, cake-pans, bread-pans, dishpans, cups, dippers, skimmers, strainers, steamers, colanders, graters, tin horns, tin whistles, toy tin dishes and patty-pans, and all kinds of little animals made of tin and brightly painted...

Almanzo wants to be a farmer, not a tinsmith OR a wheelwright. And what he wants more than anything is a horse. But sadly, Starlight isn't mentioned in the manuscript, and one ending has Mother Wilder again waiting for Almanzo (not as they leave for Minnesota, but one day as they are heading to church), and Almanzo appears with horse hairs on his coat, because he has been brushing the colts.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
here comes mr. weed
Who was Mr. Weed, the hay-baler in Farmer Boy? Was he William Weed from neighboring Belmont Township, the only "Mr. Weed" found on both the 1860 and 1870 census in Franklin County? The hay-baler is only named once in the published version; no name is given in the manuscript.

As I've blogged my way through Farmer Boy these past few weeks, I've often wondered why is there such a lack of published information about the characters from this "Little House" book? Think Jonas Lane, Mr. Paddock, Aaron Webb, Mr. Corse, Mr. Case, or Nick Brown. Do you have a working relationship with their historical counterparts? In some cases, do they even have historical counterparts? Maybe not. But it sure would be nice to read about them in upcoming issues of Farmer Boy News, wouldn't it? :-)

So, Mr. Weed, the hay-baler, arrives and Almanzo learns to bale hay (he won't learn any younger). But they don't bale hay the old-fashioned way; here comes a "fine, new machine for baling hay."

It was a stout wooden box, as long and wide as a bale of hay, but ten feet high. Its cover could be fastened on tightly, and its bottom was loose. Two iron levers were hinged to the loose bottom, and the levers ran on little wheels on iron tracks going out from each end of the box. The tracks were like small railroad tracks, and the press was called a railroad press. - Farmer Boy, Chapter 28, "Mr. Thompson's Pocketbook"

There were many patents granted on baling presses during the first half of the nineteenth century, which showed that inventors began early to wrestle with the problem of making up hay in compact bales for transportation. It wasn't until 1853 that H.L. Emery, of Albany, New York, began the manufacture and sale of a crude form of horizontal press, in which levers attached to plungers in each end of the baling chamber were operated by chains and pulleys. It was awkard in appearance and operation, and was only capable of making five 250-pound bales per hour, and it required two men and a horse to operate it. Then Father and the man put the cover on the press and fastened it securely. Father called to Almanzo and Almanzo started the horse. This press made a bale 24x24x48 inches.

Soon after this, around 1860, Levi and Peter Dederick, also of Albany, became interested in the hay press. Peter Dederick acquired the plans to some earlier attempts at hay presses, and he experimented until he brought into practical form a press for general use. His first attempts were an upright press that had for its power, two beams coming near together under the box (like the sides of a flattened letter A coming together). As the beams got closer, a strong piece of wood moved up towards the fixed top. This was the press used by the Wilders. As Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote, it was called a railroad press because the levers ran on little tracks.

Praised at the New York State Agricultural Fair in 1865, Dederick's Independent Lever Press (at a cost of $500) was said to be an entirely new invention in hay presses, and patented during the year. Three men and one horse could press a bale of hay in six minutes.

Mr. Dederick soon abandoned the vertical press in favor of a horizontal one, however, and well into the 20th century, he concentrated his improvements there.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:00 PM

 
can u cant?

With cant hooks the men rolled the logs up the incline of the slanting poles and onto the sled. The cant-poles were six feet long. The loosely swinging, iron cant-hooks at the end were hung in such a way that they caught in the side of the log when the end of the pole was thrust against it and held firmly to the log rolling it as the men lifted the end of the pole. As another man caught hold with his hook and gave the log a roll, the first man let his hook loosen and swing free, ready for a new hold father back on the log and another lift on the pole. Rolling the log quickly over and over it was soon up the skids and lying lengthwise on the sled. - Farmer Boy manuscript, page 176

A cant-hook is used to move logs either in the timber or at the sawmill. Notice that in the advertisement above, the railroad is mentioned; cant-hooks were also used to move and position railroad ties.

The typical cant-hook (check out the link, all you lumberjacks and lumberjills!) was from four to six feet long and three inches through the largest part, where a mortise or slot appears. The cant-pole tapers at each end. The iron hook is about 2 feet long and 2 inches wide and nearly a half an inch thick, often perforated with several holes to adjust the hook. A strong screw bolt secures it. Sometimes the iron hook is bolted to the side of the lever instead of being placed in a mortice, or a band of iron secures the two.

A cant-hook with a metal spike at the end of the pole (the end with the hook) is called a peavey. Use of a cant-hook with a spike is first recorded as being used by Joseph Peavey, a Maine blacksmith, in 1858.
- posted by pioneergirl at 8:00 PM