Cowgirls and Indians

Anybody interested in pioneer women or colonial history has to visit at least some of the Laura Ingalls Wilder trail in the United States.

Since the initial publication of

Little House in the Big Woods

in 1931, Wilder’s books have been continually in print and have been translated into 40 different languages. And let's not forget the TV show which ran for nine seasons.

Several of her former homes, school houses and farms in Kansas, Minnesota, South Dakota, Missouri and New York are on the trail.

When Wilder was in her 50s, her only daughter, Rose, who was herself a journalist, editor and ghost writer, urged her to write about her youth and the difficult pioneering days. 

Rose herself had the pioneer spirit in huge quantities and was a world traveller. She wrote about America as well as countries such as  Albania. But, according to Roger Lea MacBride, her lawyer, “Rose grew up at a time when ladies did not consciously seek fame”. She chose to shed light on the lives of others instead of her own.

Later under her married name of Rose Wilder Lane she wrote a number of magazine articles, some of which were published as the

Woman’s Day Book of American Needlework

. Incredibly, she was sent to Vietnam as a war correspondent in 1965 when she was 78 years old.

 “Rose read constantly and knew more about any subject I can think of than any person I ever knew,” MacBride says in the introduction to

The First Four Years

by her mother.

But a week before she was to set off on a world tour at the age of 81 Rose’s heart stopped suddenly at her home of 30 years in Danbury, Connecticut. The night before, she had sat up in jovial and lively conversation with friends after making them a baking of her famous bread.

There’s some controversy around the “Little House” books, with some believing that Rose, then one of the highest paid journalists in the nation, had written them. She did know the publishers and editors and that would have helped get her mother’s books published and most probably collaborated with her or at least had a big hand in editing them.

Laura’s books aren’t as PC as some might imagine. When American Indian groups visit her former homes in De Smet, South Dakota, they tell the association running them to “be careful what you say about Indians” as in the books “Ma” was afraid of them. Yet Laura was fascinated by Native Americans and  her descriptions of the way Indians rode along ancient trails past their cabin or came right inside demanding food makes really interesting reading.

In

The First Four Years

, Laura confronts some Indians who she thinks might take her pony and saddle. And when one lays his hand on her arm, she slaps his face.

Laura was the only one out of her sisters who had children – Rose was named for the prairie roses - but her next baby, a boy, died. Rose herself had a stillborn baby. And she was said to have been  a lesbian. And so Rose was the last living descendant of this most pioneer of pioneer women.