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May 2000

"WILD MEN" AND DISSENTING VOICES: NARRATIVE DISRUPTION IN LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE

Donna M. Campbell Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington

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Campbell, Donna M., ""WILD MEN" AND DISSENTING VOICES: NARRATIVE DISRUPTION IN LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE" (2000). Great Plains Quarterly. 19. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/19

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Published in Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 2 (Spring 2000). Published by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Copyright © 2000 Center for Great Plains Studies. Used by permission. "WILD MEN" AND DISSENTING VOICES NARRATIVE DISRUPTION IN LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE

DONNA M. CAMPBELL

Long considered to be a work celebrating tra­ others present a compelling argument about ditional pioneer values, Laura Ingalls Wilder's the potential negative effects of such repre­ Little House on the Prairie, like The Adventures sentations, yet to dismiss the work as though of Huckleberry Finn, has in recent years come Wilder's vision of other races represents a under increasing attack for its stereotypic ra­ monolithic whole is to deny the ways in which cial representations and attitudes. In one no­ the novel raises questions about racial iden­ table instance, novelist Michael Dorris tity even as it affirms some negative stereo­ describes trying to read the novels to his daugh­ types. 2 As the most prominent novel in the ters and stopping because of the unfavorable Little House series featuring Native Americans depictions ofNative American characters and and the only one featuring an African-Ameri­ Ma's "unreconstructed" bigotry.1 Dorris and can character, Little House on the Prairie is dis­ tinguished as well by its narrative ambivalence toward these figures. The central conflict in the series between Pa's pioneer spirit and Ma's civilizing impulse has become a critical com­ monplace, but another source of creative ten­ Donna M. Campbell is assistant professor of English sion deserves consideration: the ways in which at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. She the competing discourses of the novel's "wild is the author of Resisting Regionalism: Gender and men" interrupt and transform the stability of Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915, which the narrative voice.3 won the Northeast Modem Language Association-Ohio University Press Award, 1997. She is currently The multiple voices and the emphasis on working on a book covering Rose Wilder Lane and language that shape the child Laura in this midwestern women writers. book suggest more than the simple progres­ sion from being Pa's wild "half-pint" to being Ma's civilized "good girl."4 In Little House on the Prairie, the "civilizing" authorial voice can [GPQ 20 (Spring 2000): 111-221 mediate among but not silence the disruptions

111 112 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2000 posed by the "wild men" who represent alter­ tually able to usher his family into the com­ native cultures; Wilder's West is still a con­ munal life of the frontier town while his own tested narrative space where the discourse of westward-looking spirit prevents his accept­ manifest destiny does not yet hold sway. ing a stable position in it.9 As a figure poised Wilder's ambivalent representation of "wild always on the threshold between wildness and men" as a figure for the threatening yet heroic civilization, Pa embodies elements of both, "otherness" of other races, 6 her unusually var­ making him uniquely suited to be the inter­ ied techniques of narrative voice and charac­ preter between cultures. Thus it is Pa who gives terization, and the inconsistencies through Laura the word that she clutches like a talis­ which the text undercuts its surface reveal Little man-"papoose," a word that simultaneously House on the Prairie to be a work whose lin­ defamiliarizes the idea of the baby (Grace) guistic tensions expose disturbing possibilities that Laura already knows and renders less beneath the surface of its prairie pastoral. threatening the experience of "wildness" that The first of these features, the novel's de­ she will confront before the year is out. Laura piction of "wild men," functions not only as a understands this interpretive skill as part of counternarrative to the reassurance of the Pa's overall claims to omniscience. After all, authorial voice but also as a structural device she reasons, "Pa knew all about wild animals, within the novel. As several critics have so he must know about wild men, toO."IO Her pointed out, the "wild" Indians contrast with naively insensitive equation of wild men with the novel's notions of gentility, and, accord­ animals is mitigated, however, by Pa's own ing to Elizabeth Segel, "the term 'wild' does appearance as a "wild" man. Like the Osages', not hold for [Laura] the negative connotations Pa's hair sticks up; when Ma teases him, say­ it that it does for her mother."7 The opposi­ ing "You look like a wild man, Charles" (114), tions in this work between wildness and civi­ he admits that even at his most civilized­ lization are embodied in its characters: that is, during their courtship-he could not considered schematically, the Scotts represent make it lie down. Laura further identifies the the extremes of a conventionally "civilized" Indians with Pa, noting that they carry "a knife view with which Ma is affiliated, and the Na­ like Pa's hunting knife and a hatchet like Pa's tive Americans, with Pa as interpreter, oc­ hatchet" (138); perhaps more important, she cupy the opposite extreme. In this work, equates the Indian hunter's motive in killing Laura's cumulative understanding of the rela­ the panther with Pa's own motives in hunting tionship between West and East, frontier and it, thus attributing emotional as well as physi­ settlement, nature and culture, progresses cal parity to the two cultures. through her encounters with men figured as Not only Pa's appearance but his language both increasingly "wild" and increasingly he­ marks his status as a cultural intermediary. roic: Pa, Mr. Edwards, Dr. Tan, and finally The fictionalizing impulse and discursive mode Soldat du Chene. of storytelling that characterized Pa's speech Pa, the first of these characters, sets the in Little House in the Big Woods here give way standard for combining heroism with wildness. to exposition and persuasion. Stopping well Disliking boundaries and limitations, Pa shares short ofadvocacy, he nonetheless becomes the with Laura both his restlessness and his imagi­ novel's voice for the Native American point native power, characteristics that remain con­ of view. The rational tone of his expository stant and help to explain his chameleonlike mode of speech is nevertheless punctuated ability to take on a multiplicity of social and both by fragmentary, emotional outbursts that familial roles. Hamida Bosmajian notes that expose the dangers of the frontier (his early Pa prefers "to sit in his favorite place-the reference to the "band of screaming dev-" threshold,"8 and indeed he remains more a [144]) and by the comforting language ofcliche liminal than a transitional figure here, even- ("all's well that ends well") through which he "WILD MEN" AND DISSENTING VOICES 113 shapes the family's awareness of its situation. In effect, Pa internalizes two competing nar­ Laura's "domestication" involves moving from ratives involving that symbolic path, one of an initial curiosity about Indians toward a its conquest, or what Ann Romines in another position that incorporates Ma's generalized and context terms the nineteenth-century "tradi­ habituated dread. By contrast, Pa progressively tionallinear plot in which conflict and com­ discards his early, unthinking optimism to plication advance toward resolution and adopt a more complex vision that involves completion,"!! and one of his initiation into a not only a better interpretation of Native kind of sympathetic identification with the American behavior but a degree of sympathy Osage who use it. for those that inhabit the "empty" land, a The second of the novel's "wild men," Mr. movement signified by his gradual awareness Edwards, signals his nature more overtly. As of the importance of the Osage trail. Initially a "wildcat from Tennessee," Mr. Edwards, dismissing it as "some old trail" (55), he ad­ with his coonskin cap, tall boots, prowess at mits later on that he "wouldn't have built the spitting, and courtliness toward Ma, clearly house so close to it if [he'd] known it [was] a represents the vanishing tradition of south­ highroad" (227). Significantly, this awareness western humor and its "ring-tailed roarers," a marks a greater willingness to articulate the connection Wilder emphasizes through his family's plight as well. For example, Pa over­ signature song, "Old DanTucker." Best known rides Ma's objections in order to tell Laura for its tall-tale heroes such as Davy Crockett, and Mary of the Indian war-cry, for once ad­ Mike Fink, Johnson Jones Hooper's Simon mitting the girls into the fellowship of danger Suggs, and George Washington Harris's Sut that the family faces: Lovingood, southwestern humor sketches used dialect, elaborately burlesqued speech, exag­ "That yell's enough to scare anybody to gerated exploits, and broad physical humor to death," he said. "My mouth's so dry I elevate lying to an art form from which "la­ couldn't whistle a tune to save my life. Bring dies" were excluded.!2 As a representative of me some water, Laura." this tradition, Mr. Edwards in Little House on That made Laura feel better. (293) the Prairie at once evokes both its vanishing frontier and its genre-based affront to the gen­ Acknowledging his own fears, as Pa does here, teel realism of the narrative voice. His domes­ legitimizes the family's emotional response, tication through "neighborliness" parallels and and Pa follows up this confession of potential comments upon Pa's own, for his exchange of weakness with a request that asserts his pater­ labor with Pa is the first representation of nal authority, a stabilizing gesture that reas­ interdependency that Wilder shows, as if to sures Laura. Motivated by caution but also validate the idea that even frontiersmen must sympathy, he begins to meet the Indians as become socialized to survive. That Mr. equals on their own ground, in part conceding Edwards signifies a rich though unspoken their rights by chaining the dog, Jack, the rough tradition gains further credence from novel's symbol of aggressive ownership and the manuscript version of The Long Winter, in unthinking tenacity, to let Soldat du Chene which he gambles, palms cards, drinks, and pass on "his path.... An Indian trail long evades his taxes, apologizing to Ma by saying, before we came" (231). He likewise quiets the "I know you don't hold with playing cards settlers' fears by explaining that the Indians Ma'am.... But it wasn't rightly their money "had been moved west so many times that so I just kept it."13 As Rosa Moore has shown, naturally they hated white folks" (284). In a only his tax evasion remains in the final ver­ marked reversal of his earlier position, near sion, perhaps in part because it illustrates the the end of the story he strikes Jack and salutes distrust of government, respect for minding Soldat du Chene during the Osage expulsion. one's own business, and exaggerated tale-tell- 114 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2000 ing that suggest the tradition from which he If the tall tale customarily features a hu­ springs. Moreover, the ironic voice of "Mr. man, albeit larger than life, character amidst Edwards Meets Santa Claus," an unusually extraordinary circumstances, Mr. Edwards' ad­ playful departure from Wilder's customarily aptation shows instead a mythical being in serious tone, suggests the intertextual inter­ ordinary circumstances; like any seasoned pio­ ruption of southwestern humor. The dual neer, "Santa Claus traveled with a pack-mule voices here suggest heteroglossia, which in the Southwest" (247) and "rode well, for a Mikhail Bakhtin defines as "another's speech man of his weight and build" (248). Indeed, in another's language, serving to express au­ the chapter functions almost as a "carni­ thorial intentions but in a refracted way.... It valesque" interlude that provides momentary serves two speakers at the same time and ex­ release from the tension of the main narra­ presses simultaneously two different inten­ tive; it draws upon, and also plays upon or tions: the direct intention of the character parodies, Wilder's equally careful and realis­ who is speaking, and the refracted intention tic descriptions earlier in the book. Not only ofthe author."14 The narrative problem Wilder does Wilder thus neatly sidestep the question faces here is to satisfy two opposing audiences: of belief for her young readers, but she pre­ younger readers whose belief in Santa Claus serves the text from a potentially sentimental must remain undisturbed, and older readers situation, that of what Charles Frey calls the whose genre-based expectations of realism "humble child's rich Christmas,"15 by allow­ must not be violated. Allowing Mr. Edwards ing the narrative's disruption by another voice. to narrate the tale creates what Bakhtin calls To allow this voice free rein would be to de­ a "double-voiced discourse" that satisfies both stroy the generic constraints of realistic repre­ audiences, one with belief and the other with sentation within which the novel exists, humor: tipping the balance toward both the fantastic inventions of the tall tale and the decidedly "Have you ever met up, down yonder, ungenteel realism offrontier life. Its presence, with two little young girls named Mary and however, suggests a multiplicity ofpopular nar­ Laura?" ratives both raised and suppressed in the work, "I surely am acquainted with them," Mr. preparing the reader for other tales not told, Edwards replied. such as that of the Native Americans' expul­ "It rests heavy on my mind," said Santa sion from the Indian territory. Claus. "They are both ofthem sweet, pretty, Dr. Tan, the third of Wilder's heroic fig­ good little young things, and I know they ures, appears simultaneously exotic because of are expecting me. I surely do hate to disap­ his race and his association with the Osage point two good little girls like them. Yet and "civilized" because of his status as an edu­ with the water the way it is, I can't ever cated man. He represents a doubly alternative make it across that creek. I can figure no authority to that of the white settlers, for in way whatsoever to get to their cabin this addition to his race and association with the year" (246). Osage, he is a homeopathic physician, al­ though the quinine he gives was standard treat­ Like the careful grounding of supernatural el­ ment in allopathic (traditional) medicine as ements in realistic detail that mark this as a wel1. 16 He restores order and safety when tall tale, Mr. Edwards' deadpan delivery, em­ Laura's world has been turned upside down by phatic repetition ("surely am," "sweet, pretty, the Ingalls family's bout with malaria. An­ good little young things"), and dialect-in­ otherdeparture from straight narrative, Laura's flected diction ("yonder") suggest the roots of semidelirious point of view in this section reg­ this segment in the tradition of southwestern isters only a series of Vivid, fragmentary im­ humor. ages, as if she can distinguish reality from her "WILD MEN" AND DISSENTING VOICES 115 fever dreams only with difficulty: Ma's "red homa, confirming that 'the Chiefofthe Osages face" (188), Pacollapsed on the floor, Dr. Tan's at that time was named Le Soldat-du-Chene,''' "black face," the "fat woman" who turns out to other sources do not support Wilder's recol­ be Mrs. Scott. Throughout the book, material lectionsY In The Osage: An Ethnohistorical objects and a chronologically ordered routine Study ofHegemony on the Prairie-Plains, Willard constitute Laura's security, yet her visual ref­ H. Rollings identifies three members of the erence points have been disrupted, a disjunc­ Osage tribe by this name. The first, who may ture that signifies the most serious danger that have been Soldat du Chene (Oak Soldier) or the family has yet faced: "She would see Pa Soldat du Chiene (Dog Soldier), traveled with crouching by the fire in the middle ofthe night, Osage leaders to New Orleans in 1794 "to meet then suddenly sunshine hurt her eyes and Ma with the Spanish governor of Louisiana" but fed her broth from a spoon. Something was killed on the way by the Chickasaw; the dwindled slowly, smaller and smaller, till it second was "a prominent nineteenth-century was tinier than the tiniest thing. Then slowly Osage soldier."18 Another candidate is the it swelled till it was larger than anything could Little Osage chief Dog Soldier, who signed be" (186-87). Space and time, size and shape many treaties between 1815 and 1835. He had dissolve into conflated and shifting images in been invited to Washington by President Tho­ this section. In terse, abrupt sentences the mas Jefferson in 1804 and had had his portrait narrative voice reflects the plot's internal dis­ painted in Philadelphia that same year. 19 locations when even Pa, upon whom the Whether Wilder researched documents until family's security depends, is rendered helpless. she discovered this name, as William Ander­ Time collapses upon itself as Laura alternates son suggests, or recalled it but could not find between waking and sleeping, burning fever documentary evidence to support her memory, and chills, the "slow voice drawl[ing]" and the as Donald Zochert claims, may never be deter­ fast voices "jabber[ing]" (187). In a sequence mined.20 What matters is that Wilder took that reflects stylistically such feverish percep­ great pains to render Soldat du Chene as a tions, Laura experiences Dr. Tan in a series of hero both historically and fictionally in her equally refracted impressions (a "black face," story, even though the historical figure had an arm, a hand), recognizing throughout only himself been dead for many years. Like other the consistent healing power that these ele­ such figures, including Santa Claus, Pa, Big ments share. Similarly, the multiple voices Jerry, and Mr. Edwards, Soldat du Chene ap­ that signal this refracted reality can be van­ pears and disappears as a lone figure on the quished only when Dr. Tan's "mellow voice" prairie, a placement that emphasizes his mythic and "rolling, jolly laugh" (192) replace the status. As a person who mediates between In­ hallucinatory fever voices and reorient Laura dian and white worlds, he is associated with to reality. A transitional figure like Mr. Pa, and his presence in the novel places Pa in Edwards and Soldat du Chene, Dr. Tan both the company of heroes. When Pa "squatted literally saves the lives of the family and figu­ down by the Indian, and they sat there, friendly ratively provides an associative aural bridge but not saying a word" (228), they share a for Laura to return to a safe reality, one in companionable silence because Pa ironically which difference in culture need not be threat­ cannot speak French, the language of diplo­ ening. macy. This silent communion not only con­ The fourth such heroic figure, Soldat du trasts with the later sounds from the Osage Chene, shares with Dr. Tan the distinction of camp but anticipates another important event: saving the Ingalls family when they are help­ for the Verdigris River settlers, the most im­ less to save themselves. Although Virginia portant words in the book, also unheard by Wolf has established that Wilder "received a the family, are those that Soldat du Chene letter from R. B. Selridge of Muskogee, Okla- speaks to avert war. 21 116 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2000

Later in the series, another Native Ameri­ reveals a series of uncharacteristic narrative can character, the mixed-race Big Jerry, simi­ stances on the part of character and narrator larly averts catastrophe for the Ingalls family, alike. Thus Ma, whose speech is flat and lit­ not once but twice. Like Mr. Edwards, Big eral through the rest of the series except for a Jerry combines dubious morality, a knack for generous sprinkling of aphorisms, initially playing poker, frontier fighting skills, and a confuses Mary and Laura with her figurative kind heart; he speaks courteously to Ma and language. When the visiting Indians have cares for Old Johnny, the wizened Irishman gone, Ma tells the girls that "the plow and all who serves as waterboy for the workmen. Like our seeds for next year are in that bundle of Soldat du Chene, he epitomizes freedom and furs" (234), a statement that they misinter­ acquires mythic status from his first appear­ pret before understanding the abstract level of ance: "The flaming red shirt and the white value (trading furs for plow and seeds) to which horse vanished in the blazing golden light.... she refers. Another significant variation is Somehow that moment when the beautiful, Laura's plea to "Get me that little Indian baby!" free pony and the wild man rode into the sun (308), which she gives as a direct order to Pa, would last forever. "22 (65). Early in By the an imperative form that she does not repeat Shores of Silver Lake, he saves the Ingalls fam­ elsewhere in the series despite her occasional ily from horse thieves; in return, Pa warns Jerry challenges to his authority. The gesture of ap­ of the ambush awaiting him. Like Soldat du propriation that she makes here far exceeds Chene, Big Jerry uses the right powerful words Pa's initial promise that she would see a pa­ that cannot be named in the text, this time poose, although her impulse follows logically "all mixed with swear words" (115), to save from Pa's earlier racialized objectification of the family from an angry group. It is his the Indian child as a "papoose," not a baby. sponsorship that allows Pa's defiance ofa group Here, however, Pa silences Laura by saying of railroad construction workers in By the that the "Indian woman wants to keep her Shores ofSilver Lake, an action that, like Soldat baby" (309), thus recognizing the legitimacy du Chene's actions as a lone individual against of the Osages' affectional ties and restoring the crowd, is a heroic gesture of mythic pro­ the child to its proper parity with their own portions. In granting heroic status to Soldat baby, Grace. Laura's inability to express her du Chene, Big Jerry, and others pictured as feelings ("She could not say what she meant") "wild," Wilder destabilizes the text's narrative likewise occurs only a few places in the series surface and complicates its relentless march when she feels most deeply, notably in Little toward a "civilized" future. 23 Like Soldat du Town on the Prairie when, feeling helpless and Chene's words to the Osage and Pa's in con­ trapped as she does here, she resorts to the fronting the construction workers, Big Jerry's "wooden swearing" of slamming onto the desk action is less consonant with the "Noble Sav­ the books that symbolize her unwelcome fu­ age" stereotype thatcriticshave chargedWilder ture as a schoolteacher. In both instances her with perpetuating than with that of the classic body communicates the desire for freedom that isolated Western hero of the Zane Grey genre she is helpless to voice, as Laura's "shameful" fiction she read avidly late in her life. 24 tears and unladylike gestures communicate what she cannot otherwise express. The second level at which the text under­ At the level of story, Laura's questions cuts itself is that of discourse, which John emphasize her own curiosity and foreshadow Stephens has defined as "the complex process the family's eventual removal from the land; of encoding the story which involves choices at the level of discourse, Laura voices the un­ of vocabulary, of syntax, of order of presenta­ resolved conflict not only between Ma and tion."2s The text of Little House on the Prairie Pa but that inherent within their presence in "WILD MEN" AND DISSENTING VOICES 117

Indian Territory itself. An early example of "The government makes them, Laura," this function occurs in chapter 4: said Pa. "Now go to sleep." He played the fiddle softly for a while. "Why don't you like Indians, Ma?" Laura Then Laura asked, "Please, Pa, can I ask asked, and she caught a drip of molasses just one more question?" with her tongue. "May I," said Ma. "I just don't like them; and don't lick Laura began again. "Pa, please, may 1-" your fingers, Laura," said Ma. "What is it?" Pa asked. It was not polite "This is Indian country, isn't it?" Laura for little girls to interrupt, but of course Pa said. "What did we come to their country could do it. for, if you don't like them?" (46-47) "Will the government make these set­ tlers go west?" Like Huck Finn, Laura here speaks from an "Yes," Pa said. "Whenwhite settlers come innocent perspective that allows the reader to into a country, the Indians have to move see more than the characters see. She poses on. The government is going to move these the question that in effect unravels the logic Indians farther west, any time now. That's of Ma and Pa's position: it is Indian country, why we're here, Laura. White people are and the moral issues (the Indians' taking going to settle all this country, and we get cornbread, the settlers' taking land) are differ­ the best land because we get here first and ent in degree, not kind. Moreover, Ma's re­ take our pick. Now do you understand?" fusal to state her reasons stands out as irrational "Yes, Pa," Laura said. "But, Pa, I thought precisely because it runs contrary to her usual this was Indian territory. Won't it make practice of patient explanation. Laura's trans­ the Indians mad to have to-" gression here is more serious than licking mo­ "No more questions, Laura," Pa said, lasses with her fingers, for she brings to the firmly. "Go to sleep" (236-37) surface an uncomfortable question that Ma and Pa prefer not to consider. In focusing on Laura's innocent critique is here doubly rein­ the smaller issue of Laura's manners, Ma en­ forced by the narrative choice to juxtapose gages in the kind of "silencing" or brushing and implicitly contextualize it through the aside questions that she also does with Pa (in song that Ma sings, "The Blue Juniata." An­ censoring his description of the wolves) and other of the popular forms in this work, the Mrs. Scott (in her story of the "Minnesota sentimental ballad mingles two voices, that of massacres"). the singer, "bright Alfarata," and that of her As is evident in this parallel scene from warrior lover who "rings his voice in thunder chapter 18, one function of Laura's character loud / From height to height resounding" (235). is to articulate the unspoken questions of the In her extensive discussion of Little House on reader and to challenge the novel's unspoken the Prairie in Constructing the Little House, Ann defense of manifest destiny:26 Romines notes that this song is one of the few in the Little House series for which a com­ "But please tell me where the voice of plete text is provided, a distinction that "sig­ Alfarata wend" nals its special importance."27 Echoing as it "Oh, I suppose she went west," Ma an- does the sounds from the tribes' camp by the swered. "That's what the Indians do." creek, "The Blue Juniata" ironically provides "Why do they do that, Ma?" Laura asked. a safe, romanticized view ofIndians that quells "Why do they go west?" Ma's fears. It naturalizes the silencing of "They have to," Ma said. Alfarata's voice-her removal-as a result of "Why do they have to?" the inevitable processes of time, an outcome 118 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2000 that echoes Pa's explanation of manifest des­ As if to further undercut the novel's "voice tiny. of civilization," Wilder displaces its most In this passage, both Pa and Ma attempt to troublesome racist sentiments onto the char­ suppress Laura's questions by referring to acters who most clearly embody the views of higher forms of authority, Ma as guardian of nineteenth-century America: Mr. and Mrs. manners in the private sphere of the home, Scott. Just as Pa is linked to the Osage people and Pa as the spokesman for public, govern­ although he does not advocate their position, ment-sanctioned policies. Significantly, in the so Ma listens to the Scotts' tales of the "Min­ discussion that follows the ballad, neither Pa nesota massacres" although she does not ex­ nor, more surprisingly, Ma tries to legitimize plain her dislike as does the voluble Mrs. Scott. the family's presence in Indian Territory Despite their status as "good neighbors," the through any claims of moral justice or logic. Scotts are almost as foreign to this environ­ At best Laura's questions cause them to re­ ment as the hapless "tenderfeet" who earn Pa's treat into uncomfortable silence, thus suggest­ scorn for not chaining their horses in the final ing their level of ethical discomfort. As Ma's chapter (330). Throughout the Little House brother Tom points out in a later book in the series, Wilder makes a point ofskin tone: later series when describing the settlers' being books in the series such as Little Town on the driven out of the Black Hills, "It was Indian Prairie, for example, associate tanned skin, like country. Strictly speaking, we had no right Pa's and Almanzo's, with favorable qualities, there."28 Moreover, Wilder calls into question whereas a fair skin, like Nellie Oleson's, sug­ the authority of Pa's unusually curt response gests not only excessive civilization but du­ by her narrative aside: "It was not polite for plicity. If Little House on the Prairie's most little girls to interrupt, but of course Pa could heroic figures suggest ethnic "otherness" do it." The phrase "of course" emphasizes and through their exotically dark features, then initially seems to excuse Pa's transgression Mr. Scott's "hair bleached by the sun" and against the code of manners. However, if an "bright red and scaly" skin (150) signal his inconsistently applied rule betrays either its difference immediately. Moreover, except for own injustice or the guilt of those who break the Osage nation and the ubiquitous horse it, the "of course" then reverses its meaning: thieves, Mr. Scott presents the greatest pos­ "Of course" Pa should not interrupt, and, by sible human danger to the family through his implication, neither should he break the other lack of judgment. Wilder gives a prominent rule under discussion by illegally occupying place to his foolish behavior in "Fresh Water the land of the Osage people. The scene fur­ to Drink." Mr. Scott's rash behavior in refus­ ther undercuts the family's position when it ing to send the candle down the well to test pits Pa's "word straight from Washington" for dangerous gases, and his subsequent near­ (273) with the Indians' "answer from Wash­ asphyxiation when he tries to dig deeper in ington" (272). With populist tongue firmly in the well without such a test, needlessly im­ cheek, Wilder satirizes the two-faced nature peril both his life and Pa's, for Pa must risk his of politicians and the press through the ironic own life to rescue Mr. Scott. The narrative contrast between the newspaper that "proved" suggests that to be secure in an untested opin­ Pa was right and the Ingalls family's eventual ion or prejudice, such as Mr. Scott's confi­ ouster from the land. More serious here is Pa's dence about the safety of the well, is at best uncharacteristic behavior, for in silencing foolhardy, at worst nearly disastrous. Laura's questions, he has, in a sense, denied Mrs. Scott presents a subtler bad example his own nature and reversed roles with Ma. of the civilized point of view. She, too, is a Belief in the romantic pipe dream of manifest "good neighbor," caring for the Ingalls family destiny has caused him to become, like Ma, during their bout with malaria. Yet Mrs. Scott the voice of civilization. is the character who repeatedly voices the "WILD MEN" AND DISSENTING VOICES 119 notorious sentiment that begins "The only more damaging, "common sense" theories: good Indian ... ," the source of much criti­ their indefensible and unthinking racial preju­ cism of the book. Significantly, neither Ma dices. nor Pa repeats this sentiment directly. In fact, Pa takes pains to refute it at the end of"Indian Defending Little House on the Prairie in an War-Cry," although he is not otherwise averse age that rightly values cultural sensitivity pre­ to making his own sweeping judgments, sents a difficult task, for the book is not free commenting later that "Hanging's too good from troubling racial implications. Mrs. Scott's for horse-thieves" (329). In repeating this dam­ racist remarks cannot be lightly passed over, aging aphorism, Mrs. Scott speaks with the nor can the depersonalized descriptions (i.e., voice ofwhat Bakhtin calls "authoritative dis­ the "glittering eyes") of the anonymous Indi­ course," which "always remains, in the novel, ans who help themselves to Pa's tobacco and something that falls out of the artistic con­ Ma's cornbread be ignored. 29 In addition, the text" (344). It is this flat voice of authority book's historical backdrop-the appropria­ that permits no dissension and seeks to "dis­ tions of the remaining Osage trust lands that tance itself from the zone of contact" (345) culminated in the federal government's 15 July 30 that the dialogic voices within any novel con­ 1870 approval for their survey and sale ­ stantly struggle to overcome. Mrs. Scott's char­ registers primarily as it affects the settlers, a acter largely embodies this principle; it is she natural authorial distortion that, as Dorris and who continually alludes to the Minnesota mas­ McAuliffe have shown, has nonetheless had sacres and seeks to justify the manifest destiny damaging consequences. On the other hand, ofthe white settlers: "Land knows, they'd never to condemn the book out ofhand, to treat it as do anything with this country themselves. All the history that it is not rather than as the they do is roam around over it like wild ani­ literature that it is, overlooks both the inter­ mals. Treaties or no treaties, the land belongs pretive gaps in its linguistic representations to folks that'll farm it. That's only common and the complexity of its engagement with sense and justice" (211). But Mrs. Scott's the issue of racial otherness, including the "common sense" also includes the idea that undoubted heroism of its "wild men." Signifi­ the night air, and the watermelons grown in cantly, Wilder chooses not to end the novel it, can transmit malaria. The power of her with a solemn vision of the Osage leaving the "authoritative discourse," rendered impressive territory. As the Ingalls family prepares to leave by being repeated in isolation by Wilder's Kansas, Pa's optimistic perspective suggests critics, is deflated by the novelistic context that to be stationary in such a country is to that renders her statements ridiculous. Her risk being driven out, as the Scotts will be, or, statements lose all claim to credibility when worse yet, to be quite literally unable to move, placed in the context of the wild men's com­ like the stranded tenderfoot homesteaders in peting voices that create an alternative and their useless wagon. Yet the book concludes "internally persuasive discourse" about the with an image that, despite its historical inac­ Native American position. "No one knew, in curacy, suggests parity between the Ingalls fam­ 3 those days, that fever'n'ague was malaria, and ily and the Osage. ! Far from finding the "little that some mosquitoes give it to people when gray home in the West" to which Wilder al­ they bite them," comments Wilder in a narra­ ludes later in the series, the Ingalls family, like tive aside (198). Invited thus from a further the Osage people, must forsake a comfortable competing and authoritative voice, that of a stasis for movement, beginning the first of twentieth-century perspective, to dismiss (as many journeys in quest of a home. Little House Pa does), Mrs. Scott's "common sense" ap­ on the Prairie thus fittingly ends not with the proach to malaria, the reader does not hesi­ Osage removal, but with the Ingallses' expul­ tate to condemn the Scotts' other, and far sion from their prairie Eden, a choice that 120 GREAT PLAiNS QUARTERLY, SPRiNG 2000 curiously deflates this problematic vision of 535-61) In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town pioneering America. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), an engaging background study of the later books, John E. Miller sketches the pair's working relationship REFERENCES and tactfully refers to their "collaboration" as a "mother-daughter team" (95). The strongest case I am indebted to Ann Romines for com­ against Wilder's authorship is made by William ments and encouragement on this essay. Holtz, who asserts that Lane was Wilder's "ghost­ writer" and a guiding force in the success of the 1. Michael Dorris, "Trusting the Words," series in his biography of Lane, The Ghost in the Booklist 1-15 June 1993, 1821. Little House (Columbia: University of Missouri 2. In The Deaths of Sybil Bolton: An American Press, 1992). More recently, in Constructing the History, his nonfiction detective story/memoir of Little House (note 2 above), Ann Romines argues the horrifying murder of his Osage grandmother, that the "uninflected narrative that Wilder ini­ Dennis McAuliffe declares that he "would not want tially lays out is sometimes enhanced and enriched my child to read Little House on the Prairie. I would by Lane's additions and suggestions" (47) but some­ shield him from the slights she slings upon his times is not, as in the revision of the Fourth ofJuly ancestors" (New York: Random House, 1994), p. sequence in Little House on the Prairie and the 113. Claiming that Pa's eyes are like Charles Wilders' encounters with other cultures in On the Manson's and that "Pa's resume reads like that of a Way Home: The Diary ofa Trip from South Dakota to surfer bum in search of the perfect amber wave of Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894 (New York: Harper grain" (112), McAuliffe argues that Wilder not and Row, 1962). only stereotypes the Osage but mocks their hunger 4. Several critics comment on Laura's progres­ in chapter 11, "Indians in the House." Ann sive domestication through the course of the Little Romines disputes this claim in Constructing the Little House books. See especially Louise Mowder's "Do­ House: Gender, Culture, and Laura Ingalls Wilder mestication ofDesire: Gender, Language, and Land­ (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, scape in the Little House Books," Children's Literature 1997), calling "this extremely complex scene" an Association Quarterly 17, no.1 (spring 1992): 15­ attempt to convey, from a white girl's viewpoint, 19. In Laura Ingalls Wilder (Boise: Boise State Uni­ the extraordinary stresses and tensions that bur­ versity, 1994), Fred Erisman views the series as dened even the simplest contact between Euro­ being "in the classic tradition of the bildungsroman" American females and Indian men" (67). I have (45). followed the practice of Romines and other critics 5. Of particular use in sorting out these voices in using the terms "Native American" and "In­ is Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, or dian" interchangably. the interactive dialogue between a text's referen­ 3. The unifying presence of this voice itself tial and fixed "transcription" of meaning and the exists, as William Holtz, Anita Clair Fellman, and context of that transcription, which may under­ Rosa Ann Moore have shown, as an amalgamation cut, parody, or otherwise transform the original of the sometimes conflicting narrative visions of meaning into something quite different ("Discourse Wilder and her editor and daughter, Rose Wilder in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Lane. The question of authorship that began with Essays, ed. Michael Holquist [Austin: University the publication of The First Four Years in 1971 is of Texas Press, 1981]). still being contested. Early critics of Wilder's work 6. Mowder discusses the Native Americans as saw the efforts ofher daughter Rose Wilder Lane as "other" in "Domestication of Desire" (note 4 largely editorial in scope, whereas more recent criti­ above). cism has focused on a more complex level of revi­ 7. Elizabeth Segel, "Laura Ingalls Wilder's sion and collaboration. Rosa Ann Moore takes the America: An Unflinching Assessment," Children's former view in "Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Literature in Education 8 (1977): 67. Wilder Lane: The Chemistry of Collaboration," 8. Hamida Bosmajian, "Vastness and Contrac­ Children's Literature in Education 11, no.3 (fall tion of Space in Little House on the Prairie," 1980): 101-9, and "Laura Ingalls Wilder's Orange Children's Literature 11 (1983): 61. Notebooks and the Art of the Little House Books," 9. In the series, Pa is by turns a trapper, farmer, Children's Literature 4 (1975): 105-19. Anita Clair railroad paymaster, and carpenter; Wilder omits Fellman examines the political and social implica­ Charles Ingalls's stints as hotelkeeper, storekeeper, tions of collaboration in "Laura Ingalls Wilder and and insurance agent. Wilder stresses the "free and Rose Wilder Lane: The Politics of a Mother-Daugh­ independent" spirit that motivates these shifts in ter Relationship," Signs 15, no.3 (spring 1990): occupation and downplays the perilous economic "WILD MEN" AND DISSENTING VOICES 121 circumstances that Pa's peripatetic nature gener­ on the Prairie was to recite all of American history ates. For a complete account of Pa's occupations, up to the point when "the first wagon wheels rolled see especially Miller's Little Town (note 3 above). into Kansas," a section that would have included 10. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prai­ the familiar tale of the Pilgrims' isolated settle­ rie (1935; reprint. New York: Harper and Row, ment saved by a lone friendly Indian, Tisquantum 1953), p. 56. Subsequent page references appear in (Squanto). parentheses in the text. 22. Laura Ingalls Wilder, By the Shores of Silver 11. Ann Romines, "The Long Winter: An In­ Lake (1939; reprint, New York: Harper and Row, troduction to Western Womanhood," Great Plains 1953), p. 65. Subsequent page references appear in Quarterly 10, no.l (winter 1990): 37. parentheses in the text. 12. Some of the characters mentioned appear in 23. In The First Four Years (New York: Harper Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Georgia Scenes and Row, 1971), Laura's final encounter with Na­ (1833); Johnson Jones Hooper, Some Adventures of tive Americans provides a fitting coda to the events Captain Simon Suggs (1845); and George Washing­ in the earlier novels. After her marriage to Almanzo, ton Harris, Sut Lovingood, Yarns (1867). Many of a group of five men come to her house on the the stories that came to be called southwestern claim, but she, unlike Ma, refuses to offer food humor were published in William T. Porter's news­ despite their requests. When she believes that they paper Spirit ofthe Times, including one ofthe genre's will steal her pony, Trixy, Laura runs to the barn best-known stories, Thomas Bangs Thorpe's "The and orders the men to leave. In this scene, Laura Big Bear ofArkansas," which appeared on 17 March responds not with restraint but with wildness: her 1841. Barely resigned to fictional interlopers such hair flies free from its usual confines for the first as James Kirke Paulding whose The Lion ofthe West time in several of the novels and her "purple eyes (1830) presented a thinly veiled portrayal of his [flash] fire" (33) as she slaps the leader who asks exploits, the real Davy Crockett responded by pro­ her to accompany him. Wilder evokes the earlier ducing his own Narrative ofthe Life ofDavid Crockett scenes from Little House on the Prairie as Laura stands (1834). watching the men go west on "their running po­ 13. Rosa Moore, "Laura Ingalls Wilder's Orange nies without saddles or bridles" (35). This scene Notebooks and the Art of the Little House Books," marks an end to Laura's westward travels, how­ Children's Literature 4 (1975), 114. ever, in a reversal of the earlier scene. Unlike the 14. Bakhtin, "Discourse" (note 5 above), p. 324. child Laura, who covets the Indian baby and wants Subsequent page references appear in parentheses to go west, the adult Laura refuses both to relin­ in the text. quish her pony (the reader recalls the equivalence 15. Charles Frey, "Laura and Pa: Family and of horses and children in the series, as when the Landscape in Little House on the Prairie," Children's Boasts offer to exchange their best horse for Laura's Literature Association Quarterly 12, no. 3 (fall 1987): child, Rose) and to continue her westward move­ 127. ment. 16. Donald Zochert identifies Dr. Tan as a ho­ 24. Big Jerry figures even more significantly in meopathic physician in his biography for juvenile the "Pioneer Girl" manuscript, where he metes out readers, Laura: The Life ofLaura Ingalls Wilder (New a kind of rough class-based justice by subduing an York: Avon Books, 1997), p. 34. officious eastern timekeeper who tries to hurry along 17. Virginia Wolf, Little House on the Prairie: A the construction crews building the railroads. As Reader's Companion (New York: Twayne, 1996), p. the men grow angry under the timekeeper's "lofty" 13. tones, Big Jerry leads him to the spot where the 18. Willard H. Rollins, The Osage: An Ethno­ teamsters dump the loads ofearth they have scraped historical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains from the grade and keeps him there while loads of (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), dirt cascade over him, spoiling his fine white shirt pp. 173-74. and collar (George T. Bye Version, from the Rose 19. James D. Horan, The McKenney-Hall Portrait Wilder Lane Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Gallery of American Indians (New York: Crown Library, West Branch, Iowa, pp. 95-96). Publishers, 1972), p. 336; Ron Tyler, Prints of the 25. Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction West (Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing, 1994), (Essex: Longman, 1992), 17. p.40. 26. In "Unflinching Assessment" (note 7 above), 20. Zochert, Laura (note 16 above), p. 44; Wil­ Segel comments that "Pa is obviously reluctant to liam Anderson, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography articulate the assumptions of Manifest Destiny, to (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 201. acknowledge that they underlie his life's decisions 21. It is worth remembering that the character as well as the Scotts'" (68) and Janet Spaeth com­ Laura's part in the school exhibition of Little Town ments that "Pa's reluctance-or inability-to explain 122 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2000

the logic behind Manifest Destiny illustrates his Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa, recognition of its inherent difficulties" (Laura pp. 2-4). Ingalls Wilder. [Boston: Twayne, 1987], p. 32). 30. John E. Miller, Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: 27. Romines, Constructing the Little House, (note The Woman behind the Legend (Columbia: Univer­ 2 above), p. n. sity of Missouri Press, 1998), p. 26. 28. Laura Ingalls Wilder, These Happy Golden 31. In '''Don't Expect to Depend on Anybody Years (1943; reprint. New York: Harper and Row, Else': The Frontier as Portrayed in the Little House 1953), p. 109. Books," Anita Clair Fellman demonstrates that the 29. Significantly, the "glittering eyes" comment Ingalls family left Kansas because "the man who does not appear in Wilder's original autobiographi­ had bought their farm in Wisconsin reneged on cal narrative, "Pioneer Girl" (George T. Bye Ver­ the deal and refused to pay the remainder of what sion, from the Rose Wilder Lane Papers, Herbert he owed them" (Children's Literature 26 [1996]: 109).