Little House on the Prairie

Summary

Little House on the Prairie follows the Ingalls family through roughly a year in Kansas, on land the book calls Indian Territory, around 1869 and 1870. Pa sells the little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin because the woods are filling with people and the game is growing scarce. He packs Ma, Mary, Laura and Baby Carrie into a covered wagon pulled by the mustangs Pet and Patty, with the brindle bulldog Jack trotting underneath. They cross the frozen Mississippi just before the ice breaks up and travel through Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri. In Kansas a creek in flood nearly drowns Jack, who is left behind and turns up at the camp days later. On the high prairie, about a day's drive from the town of Independence, Pa builds a log house. His new neighbor Mr. Edwards, a lanky bachelor from Tennessee, helps him raise the walls, and Pa adds a stick-and-clay chimney, a door with a latchstring, a roof and a puncheon floor. A pack of wolves circles the cabin one night. While digging a well for Mr. Scott, a neighbor, Pa has to haul him up when he collapses from bad air at the bottom, and afterward lowers a candle to test the air before going down. Cowboys driving Texas longhorns pay Pa with a cow and calf for helping them. In late summer the whole family falls ill with fever 'n' ague; Dr. Tan, a Black physician who doctors the Osage, finds them when Jack leads him to the door, and Mrs. Scott nurses them back to health. A chimney fire breaks out while Pa is away, and Pa makes the long trip to Independence for nails and window glass. At Christmas the creek is too high to cross, but Mr. Edwards swims it with gifts he says Santa Claus gave him in Independence: a tin cup, a stick of peppermint candy, a heart-shaped cake and a penny for each girl. Through the book Osage men come and go along a trail near the house. Two of them enter the cabin while Pa is out and take cornbread and his tobacco. In spring the tribes gather in the creek bottoms, a prairie fire races past, and nights fill with war cries until, Pa learns, the Osage leader Soldat du Chêne persuades the others not to attack. Laura watches the long column ride west and begs for a baby she sees on a pony. Finally Pa hears that soldiers will remove the white families from the Territory. Rather than wait to be put off, he loads the wagon, leaves the house and the plowed field behind, and drives the family out onto the prairie, where he plays his fiddle by the campfire. Harper & Brothers published the book in 1935 with illustrations by Helen Sewell; Garth Williams illustrated the 1953 edition. It was the third Little House book to appear and the second about the Ingalls family.

Top Lessons

• Making a home with your hands

  Almost everything in the cabin is made by Pa from what is near: walls from creek-bottom logs, a door hung on wooden hinges, a chimney of sticks and clay, a floor of split logs. Wilder slows down to show each step, so that a child sees how much work, skill and patience lie behind a roof, a door and a warm hearth.

• Neighbors in a lonely place

  Out on the prairie, help is a long way off, and the family's life depends on neighbors. Mr. Edwards helps raise the house and wades the flooded creek at Christmas, Pa goes down the well for Mr. Scott, and Mrs. Scott and Dr. Tan nurse the family when everyone is too sick to fetch water.

• Courage that stays calm

  Ma meets wolves, strangers in her kitchen, a chimney fire and nights of war cries without panic, and she expects the girls to keep their manners and do as they are told. The book shows courage as steadiness and obedience in danger, not as noise or boasting.

• Two peoples on the same land

  The Ingalls cabin stands beside an Osage trail, and the book lets Laura notice and wonder about her neighbors: the beads at the empty camp, the tall visitor at the fire, the drumming in the creek bottoms and the long line riding away. The grown-ups hold different opinions, Pa speaking with respect and others with fear, and Pa's departure at the end shows that the land was not his to keep.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Chapter 15, Fever 'n' Ague, is a vivid child's-eye account of frontier malaria. The whole family is laid low with alternating chills and fever, too weak to fetch water, and is rescued by a passing physician and a neighbor who nurses them. The chapter records two period theories of the cause: Mrs. Scott blames watermelons grown in the creek bottoms, while Pa blames the night air, a version of the miasma theory; Wilder's narrator adds that nobody yet knew the illness came from mosquito bites, which was established only in the late 1890s. The physician, called Dr. Tan in the book, is the historical Dr. George A. Tann (d. 1909), a Black practitioner of eclectic medicine in Independence; the bitter medicine he gives was very likely quinine, the standard remedy of the day, though the novel may not name it. Chapter 12 adds a piece of practical frontier occupational medicine: Mr. Scott collapses from foul air at the bottom of a new well, and Pa afterward lowers a lit candle to test the air before he goes down.

• Chapter 15, "Fever 'n' Ague"

  The whole family falls ill with chills and fever; Dr. Tan arrives, gives medicine, and Mrs. Scott nurses them; the watermelon and night-air theories of the illness are debated.

• Chapter 12, "Fresh Water to Drink"

  Mr. Scott is overcome by bad air in the well and hauled out; Pa tests the air with a candle before resuming the digging.

• Chapter 5, "The House on the Prairie"

  Ma's foot is crushed when a wall log slips, and she treats the sprain with bandages and rest while Pa finishes the walls.