picket
n. A stake sharpened or pointed, used in fortification and encampments. A narrow board pointed, used in making fences; a pale or paling. To fasten to a picket. v.t. To fortify with pickets or pointed sticks. To inclose or fence with narrow, pointed boards. To fasten to a picket. (Webster, 1882)
Picket-lines were long ropes fastened to iron pegs driven into the ground. The pegs were called picket-pins. When horses were on picket-lines they could eat all the grass that the long ropes would let them reach. – Little House on the Prairie, Chapter 3, "Camp on the High Prairie"
A picket refers to a stake or pointed stick. In the "Little House"® books - as described in Little House on the Prairie - a picket pin was a metal rod pounded into the ground and used to tether an animal. A rope, lariat, or line was tied from the swivel hook at the top of the pin to the animal's halter, allowing movement and
the ability to graze in a circle as large as the line allowed. The pin was moved to fresh grass periodically.
Picketing was necessary to keep an animal from wandering when there are no fences to do so. However, Laura Ingalls Wilder writes that unweaned cattle and horses would stay near their mothers and therefore needed no picket ropes of their own.
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— Jay L. Taylor, Handbook for Rangers and Woodsmen (London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1917), 26. |
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