“War whoops of Indians attacking settlers,” is the first line of the section entitled THE PROMISED LAND. My heavens, as Ma Ingalls would say. There’s a lot to unpack here.
I was going to whip right through the frontier in one afternoon and instead I want to focus on why I think I wouldn’t put Laura Ingalls Wilder in an elementary school library. I don't think it matters if I digress, because I realize I am writing this for myself rather an other readers. Be prepared for MUCH digression.
I love Laura. I have been to all but 2 of her homesites. I have attended Laurapalooza and would go again! I have a Little House in the Big Woods shot glass purchased in Pepin, Wisconsin that I use to make many cocktails. I will love those books until the day I die.
However: My friend Radhika, now a very well respected doctor, was once a young girl whose parents emigrated from India. She was reading LHotP and read Ma’s opinion that “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” and thought it applied to her. Now it didn’t, but she didn’t know that and it was a good long time before she realized it. And it DOES apply to any native kids reading that. If this book makes one kid feel badly about their background, that is one too many.
However: My friend Radhika, now a very well respected doctor, was once a young girl whose parents emigrated from India. She was reading LHotP and read Ma’s opinion that “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” and thought it applied to her. Now it didn’t, but she didn’t know that and it was a good long time before she realized it. And it DOES apply to any native kids reading that. If this book makes one kid feel badly about their background, that is one too many.
The books are still worthy of study, of course. Dickens used to be the Stephen King of his day. Hell, he was the Tiger King of his day. Everyone waited with bated breath for the newest episode of his work. And now very few people read him for pleasure. Those who do are in for a treat, but time has moved on. We have not forgotten Dickens, we have just elevated him to a classic.
Certainly kids can still read LHotP - there is much to love in them. If they were reprinted with an introduction that sets them in their proper historical context - with the story of the Osage who were displaced in the book, I might change my mind.
Someday I will take my mythical granddaughter Little Barbara on my lap and we will read about the “Indian camp” in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE and I will tell her just how wrong Ma was and why, and she will say, “Wow, that is NOT the way they teach it in school!” and I will be so happy because she will be in school in a time when all voices are heard.
The focus of history changes every day. Aren’t we lucky to live in a world where so many narratives are available at the same time? Generally the “victor” gets to tell the story, but that is no longer the case. And Laura wasn’t in a war with Omakayas, the little girl from THE BIRCHBARK HOUSE. They existed at the same time and their stories both could be true at the same time.
To be clear, both are fiction, although Wilder based her fiction on her real life experiences, with some dramatic flourishes and omissions. One of the larger omissions is one that Laura’s uber-Libertarian daughter and editor Rose Wilder Lane left out. When she edited the books, any inkling that Mary went to the blind school on Uncle Sam’s dollar went by the wayside.
Why not focus on the version of the story that doesn’t make any kid feel bad? And to those who would say that it makes white kids feel bad to hear about white suppression of Native culture I would say, no it doesn’t, unless their grownups are acting actively butt-hurt. The books are beautifully written and every kid who reads them is going to want to be Omakayas. Just like I wanted to be Laura.
All quotes and images are from TL unless otherwise noted.
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