American Masters (1985–…): Season 35, Episode 4 - Laura Ingalls Wilder: Prairie to Page - full transcript

♪

Announcer: The National
Endowment for the Humanities,

bringing you the stories
that define us.

♪

Young woman:
"Once upon a time, 60 years ago,

a little girl lived
in the big woods of Wisconsin

in a little gray house
made of logs.

The great dark trees of the big
woods stood all around the house

and beyond them were other trees
and beyond them more trees.

There were no people."

Narrator:
When Laura Ingalls Wilder



told the stories
of her childhood,

millions of young readers
were spellbound.

For teachers, the "Little House"
books were a perfect primer

on the settling of America,

written by someone
who was there.

Harper: "I realized that I had
seen and lived it all...

All the successive phases
of the frontier...

First the frontiersman,

then the pioneer,
then the farmers, and the towns.

And then I understood
that in my own life

I represented a whole period
of American history."

Anderson: Laura Ingalls Wilder

is the quintessential
American pioneer.

Thousands of people had
very similar experiences



as Wilder and her family.

But her storytelling made that
an adventure story.

Young woman:
"Pa and Ma were still
and silent on the wagon seat,

and Mary and Laura
were quiet, too.

But Laura felt
all excited inside.

You never know
what will happen next,

nor where you'll be tomorrow,

when you are traveling
in a covered wagon."

Fraser:
She's almost like a folk artist.

The novels as she left them
are almost works of folk art

that capture
the attitudes of the time.

Narrator: After more than
30 million copies sold,

and a long-running TV show...

Laura: Home is the nicest word
there is.

Pa: One of the nicest,
that's for sure.

Narrator:
the "Little House" books

are a part of the American
fabric, and so is the woman

who based them
on her extraordinary childhood.

Anderson: We have the image

of this wonderful,
white-haired, pretty lady

telling America's kids
all these great stories.

That became an urban legend.

Narrator: To her readers,
Wilder's novels

were a wondrous achievement
from a humble farm woman

who seemed to have perfected
her craft all on her own.

They had no idea
the books emerged

from a hidden collaboration
with her daughter, Rose.

Fraser: Rose's role in this
is not to be dismissed.

Anderson:
Friends of hers ask her,

"What did you have to do
with your mother's books?"

And she cut them off
very sharply.

It was a deep, dark secret.

Hill: I think all good writers
are mysterious in some way.

What was real and what was not
real in their lives?

Fraser: They're wonderful
family stories.

They show us who we want
to think we are.

We want to think that we're
self-reliant pioneers.

We want to think that that's
the truth about ourselves.

But when you examine
that fantasy, you realize

that the reality was much,
much, much more complicated.

Sarah: There are two Lauras.

There's Laura of the book,

and there's Mrs. Wilder,

who used to be Laura.

Harper:
"All I have told is the truth

but not the whole truth."

♪

Fiery: "Mrs. Laura I. Wilder,

Rocky Ridge,
Mansfield, Missouri.

Dear Mrs. Wilder,

I like the material
you have used.

It covers a period
in American history

about which very little
has been written,

and almost nothing
for boys and girls."

Narrator: The news from a
New York editor was unexpected.

And at 64, Laura Ingalls Wilder

was on her way
to becoming a children's author.

The manuscript, "When Grandma
Was a Little Girl,"

was spun out of a memoir
Wilder had written

called "Pioneer Girl."

It showed promise,
but it needed more work.

Fiery: "Would you be willing
to make some editorial changes

on your manuscript?

The more details you can include

about the everyday life
of the pioneers,

such as the making
of the bullets,

what they eat and wear,
et cetera,

the more vivid an appeal

it will make
to children's imaginations."

Narrator:
"When Grandma Was a Little Girl"

turned into
"Little House in the Big Woods,"

and that turned into
something else entirely.

Harper: "When to my surprise
the book made such a success

and children all over the U.S.

wrote to me
begging for more stories,

I began to think what a
wonderful childhood I had had."

♪

Narrator: So began
the "Little House" series...

Wilder's eight books about
growing up and moving West.

Running through them all,
she later said,

were her parents' values.

"When possible, they turned
the bad into good.

When not possible,
they endured."

Harper: "Sister Mary and I
loved Pa's stories best.

We never forgot them,
and I have always thought

that they were just too good
to be altogether lost."

Narrator: And when Wilder
preserved her father's stories,

she made him a mythic figure...
Always looking West.

Her readers would come
to know Charles Ingalls as Pa,

just as she did.

Charles Ingalls was born
in Western New York in 1836,

one of nine children.

Fraser: Charles Ingalls
came from a family

of not great means
and some insecurity himself.

He was born in Cuba, New York.

His father didn't have
his own land,

is working as
some kind of laborer.

Narrator:
Mottos and slogans of the day

said, "Go West, young man,
and grow up with the country,"

and the Ingalls family did just
that, heading out to Illinois.

Fraser: This is for sure
Charles Ingalls' first exposure

to the prairies.

This may be the time in his life

when he is exposed to music.

Maybe gets his fiddle in this
town or crossroads in Illinois.

♪

Narrator: But for all
the opportunity advertised,

the family never found it.

They eventually moved on
to Wisconsin.

Fraser: There's not a lot of
stability in... in this family.

They're working. They're trying
to make a living.

They're not really succeeding
for any length of time.

They can't really put together
enough of a stake to last,

and so that's Charles' youth.

And he will basically
hew to that pattern

for most of the rest
of his life.

Narrator: In Wisconsin,
Charles Ingalls' family

befriends the Quiners who live
across the Oconomowoc River.

Charles courts Caroline Quiner,
and they marry in 1860.

Harper: "Mother was descended
from an old Scotch family

and inherited
the Scotch thriftiness

which helped
with the livelihood.

Although born and raised
on the frontier,

she was an educated
and cultured woman.

She was very quiet and gentle,
but proud and particular

in all manners
of good breeding."

Hill: Their personalities
were very, very different.

Caroline was more quiet
and reserved.

Charles Ingalls
was more outgoing,

a poet, a hunter, a musician.

That's how Laura Ingalls Wilder
came to think of her father.

Wilder: Pa holds his fiddle,

and he nearly always
sat in his chair when he played

and kept time to the music by
patting his foot on the floor.

♪

Hill: He was the more romantic
of the two, I think.

But they had a very solid,
very happy marriage.

Harper:
"The spirit of the frontier

was one of humor
and cheerfulness

no matter what happened,

whether the joke was on oneself
or on the other fellow.

Strangers coming West possessed
or acquired that spirit

if they survived as Westerners.

My parents possessed
this frontier spirit

to a marked degree."

♪

Narrator: Charles and Caroline's
early years together

were marked by the Civil War.

But another war hit closer
to their Wisconsin home.

Fraser:
The incident that is mentioned

in "Little House
on the Prairie,"

the U.S. Dakota war of 1862,

happened five years
before Laura was born.

Beane: The Dakota War took place

because of a number
of broken treaties,

broken promises between this
government and Dakota people.

The people who did fight
in the war

were fighting to protect
the rights of our families

to remain in our homeland
and to remain Dakota.

And they were very, very violent
battles that took place.

And the media coverage
that happened during that era

was media coverage that was
trying to incite fear in people.

Fraser: The Ingalls would've
known all about that because

they were living just across
the Mississippi in Wisconsin.

[Chuckling]
Wisconsin as a state was...

Was scared spitless,

because the refugees
came flooding back

across the river into Wisconsin.

So all the Wisconsinites thought
that they were next,

you know, that they were
going to be attacked.

White women at that time
did feel great fear

of Indians.

And, you know, Wilder,
years later,

I think she was rem...
Remembering the fear

that her mother
must have expressed

and the racism
that her mother clearly felt.

Narrator: 1862 also brought
the Homestead Act.

In exchange for a small
filing fee, men and women,

freed slaves and immigrants,

were given the chance to own
and farm 160-acre plots.

American Indians continue
to be forced off tribal lands

in the rush
to settle the Great Plains.

McDowell: That was really
the push of the day.

It was push out, you know,
Westward expansion.

Let's get the churches built
and the schools built

and the railroad built

and connect the whole country
from coast to coast.

Narrator: Charles and Caroline
settle into a log cabin

near Pepin, Wisconsin,

where they are surrounded
by family and neighbors.

Their first daughter, Mary,
is born

just as the Civil war
is coming to an end.

Laura arrives two years later,
in 1867.

Young woman:
"Once upon a time, 60 years ago,

a little girl lived
in the big woods of Wisconsin

in a little gray house
made of logs.

The great dark trees of the big
woods stood all around the house

and beyond them were other trees
and beyond them more trees.

There were no people.
There were only trees

and the wild animals
who had their homes among them."

McDowell: When I compare
Laura Ingalls Wilder's writing,

I think of Thoreau
talking about Walden Pond.

It's that same
sort of connection

to "how I built my cabin,
how I lived, and what I saw."

Narrator: When Laura is 2,

the Ingalls leave the log cabin
bound for Kansas.

Harper: "Pa stopped the horses
and the wagon

they were hauling away out on
the prairie in Indian territory.

'Well, Caroline, ' he said,

'Here's the place
I've been looking for.'"

Narrator:
Charles and his family

settle near Independence,
Kansas,

where their third daughter,
Carrie, is born.

Fraser: They settle on land
that it's pretty clear he knew

was not available

for white settlement
at that time.

It belonged to
the Osage Indians.

The logs
that Charles Ingalls used

to build the little house
on the prairie

did not belong to him.

They belonged to the Osage.

It was an act of theft.

Certainly wasn't seen so
at the time

by people like Charles Ingalls.

But now it's quite clear
that it was.

♪

Erdrich: The idea
that this was empty space...

It was shocking to me
that I hadn't noticed that,

but I was a child.
So this is how children read it.

They read these books

with a complete sense
of storytelling

and faith in these books.

Narrator: "Little House on the
Prairie," Wilder's third novel,

would describe her family's time

in what she called
"Indian country."

Fraser: She also portrays
the child, Laura,

as having a fear

but also a deep fascination with

what she describes as these,
you know,

wild people who were
completely different.

That kind of encapsulates

the very strange attitude
that whites had at that time

towards these people
as if they were,

first of all, not people,

that they were something
that could be

had for the taking.

That is one of the things
that makes that novel,

I think, one of the most
important documents

about the history of that time.

♪

Narrator: Laura is barely 4
when the Ingalls leave Kansas.

The family returns to Wisconsin,

and the next three years
of Laura's life

are spent in the cabin
near Pepin.

Harper:
"When the work was done,

Ma would cut out
paper dolls for us

and let us cook on the stove
for our play house dinners.

She taught Mary how to knit.

She said I was too little,

but sitting by and watching,

I caught the trick first."

Fraser:
Wisconsin seems to have been

probably the most stability

that they might have
ever experienced

if they had just stayed.

They seemed to have been able

to kind of eke out
an existence there.

So they might have saved
themselves

quite a lot of toil and trouble
if they had stayed.

But they didn't. [Laughs]

Narrator: The Ingalls' second
stay in Pepin

became the basis for
"Little House in the Big Woods."

The time frame was shifted
a bit for the novel.

When she wrote for children,

Wilder eliminated
and embellished,

shaping and stretching
her own history.

Fraser:
And I think, ultimately,

writing the "Little House" books

was her was her way
of trying to process

all that had happened to her

both in positive
and negative ways.

She was both revisiting
the closeness

and the love
she had for her family.

But she was also reliving
the terror

of their experience,
because on many occasions,

they did face ruin or starvation

or disaster.

Narrator: Disaster was looming
when the Ingalls

moved West to Minnesota
to start a new life in a dugout.

Fraser:
The Ingalls family comes to

this area near Walnut Grove
in 1874.

And they settle in this place
called Plum Creek

which is a beautiful spot.

And they begin all over again.
He builds a house.

She calls it
the beautiful house.

I think it was one
of the nicest places

that they'd ever lived.
[Chuckles]

And then, of course,
he plants this beautiful crop.

And it's growing very nicely.

Harper:
"The weather was just right,

and the crops grew and grew.

He said the grain was all soft
and milky yet,

but it was so well grown,

he felt sure we would have
a wonderful crop."

Fraser:
The wheat is coming up.

And it's gonna pay
all their debts.

[Laughing]
And, you know, they...

They've built castles in the sky
on this crop.

And then they hear
their neighbor screaming.

Harper:
"'The grasshoppers are coming!

The grasshoppers are coming!'
she shrieked.

'Come and look!'

And then we saw that
the cloud was grasshoppers,

their wings a shiny white

making a screen
between us and the sun."

Narrator: It's 1875,

and the Ingalls have just
experienced

the Rocky Mountain
Locust Invasion...

Trillions of grasshoppers

in a cloud that covered
nearly 200,000 square miles.

Grasshoppers would again
ruin a second Ingalls' harvest

the following season.

Fraser:
The grasshoppers eat everything.

And how, you know, heartbreaking
that must have been

because it just destroyed
all of their hopes

in a matter of hours.

Narrator: The locust plague
appears true-to-life

in Wilder's fourth novel,
"On the Banks of Plum Creek."

Hill:
What I think is really striking

is that her account
in "Pioneer Girl,"

which is essentially nonfiction,

traces fairly closely
to what she did

in the fictional version in
"On the Banks of Plum Creek."

It's... It's relatively close.

Young woman: "It was a cloud
of something like snowflakes,

but they were larger
than snowflakes,

and thin and glittering.

Light shone through
each flickering particle.

Plunk! Something hit Laura's
head and fell to the ground.

She looked down and saw

the largest grasshopper
she had ever seen.

Then huge brown grasshoppers
were hitting the ground

all around her, hitting her head
and her face and her arms.

They came thudding down
like hail.

The cloud was hailing
grasshoppers.

The cloud was grasshoppers."

Anderson: The devastating
grasshopper plagues

ruined their chances
of successful farming.

♪

Narrator: In Walnut Grove,
Caroline gives birth again.

This time, it's a boy
they call Freddy.

Charles, now deeply in debt,
signs a pauper's oath...

A public acknowledgement
that he is destitute.

It allows him to receive
food for his family...

In this case,
2 1/2 barrels of flour.

Sarah: It is not well-known
that he signed a pauper's oath

during the grasshopper plague,
and that was...

I mean,
that would've been a huge blow.

To swear anything, to swear
any kind of oath was...

We don't appreciate
what that means today.

He was writing down on paper,
"I am a pauper.

I cannot support my family.

I need help."

And that's so counter to
the Pa that we're familiar with.

Anderson: And they were
essentially so in need of funds

that Charles Ingalls
concocted a scheme

that they would move
to Burr Oak, Iowa.

Narrator: And the downward
spiral continues.

Caroline is sick, and there
are more doctor's bills.

On the way to Burr Oak,
baby Freddy dies.

Harper: "Little brother was
not well, and the Dr. came.

I thought that would cure him
as it had Ma

when the Dr. came to see her.

But little brother got worse
instead of better,

and one awful day, he
straightened out his little body

and was dead."

Hill:
Probably the biggest omission

that Wilder made
in the "Little House" books,

the biggest deviation
from her real life,

was the family's
experiences in Iowa

and the loss
of baby brother Freddy.

Freddy died very suddenly.

He was only 9 months old.

And Laura Ingalls Wilder chose
not to write about him

or the family's
experiences in Iowa.

♪

Fraser: Charles Ingalls,

he's again heavily in debt
to doctors.

In fact, at one point, you know,
the doctor's wife in Burr Oak

approaches Caroline Ingalls
about possibly adopting Laura

as a kind of surrogate
daughter/household worker.

Narrator: After the birth of the
last Ingalls daughter, Grace,

the doctor's bills
and debt become insurmountable.

Fraser:
If you got in debt to somebody,

there were legal ramifications
for that.

And so they end up leaving
Burr Oak

in the middle of the night.

Charles Ingalls loads
the whole family

and all their belongings
in the wagon.

And they just flee the town,
flee their debts.

I mean, she just would
not have dreamed

of saying that, I think,
in a book for children.

Harper: "Sometime in the night,
we children were waked

to find the wagon with
a cover on standing by the door

and everything but our bed
and the stove loaded in.

Then we climbed in
and drove away in the darkness."

Fraser: You see her again
and again trying to grapple

with her... her father's
failures as a provider.

[Chuckling] You know, and
there's this sort of tragic

sentence in one
of her manuscripts

where she writes,
"Pa was a good farmer.

He always paid his debts"...

You know, complete fantasy.

Narrator: In her fiction,

Pa moved the family West
in a straight line.

The truth was a different story.

It was a meandering journey.

By time she was 14,

Laura lived in at least
15 different homes.

Sarah: The trajectory
in real life is very zig-zaggy.

In the books the... the movement
is attributed

to Pa's wandering foot

and to this Westward pull
that he experiences.

But the reality looks more like

he's just... he's bouncing a bit.

He tries something,
and it doesn't work,

so he has to go backwards
and try something new,

and that works for a bit.

And then he gets a better idea,
or it doesn't work.

It's a lot of trial and error.

Narrator:
By the late summer of 1877,

the Ingalls family
is zig-zagging once again,

back to Walnut Grove.

Fraser:
Laura begins working in a hotel

for a family called
the Masters family.

She's exposed to all kinds
of shenanigans in that hotel.

It's sort of a, you know,
slightly squalid,

dangerous atmosphere for a kid.

In fact, one of the Masters'
wastrel sons

almost seems to have tried
to abuse her or attack her

in the middle of the night
one night.

And she fights him off

by telling him
that she'll scream

if he does anything to her.

Harper: "One night, I waked
from a sound sleep

to find Will leaning over me.

I could smell the whiskey
on his breath.

I sat up quickly.

'Is Nannie sick?' I asked.

'No, ' he answered,
'Lie down and be still!'

'Go away quick, ' I said,
'or I will scream for Nannie.'

He went, and the next day,
Ma said I could come home."

Fraser: It shows you
just how kind of out of control

the whole situation had become.

Narrator: Then Mary, who had
been sick for several months,

became gravely ill.

Harper: "She was delirious
with an awful fever,

and one morning
when I looked at her,

I saw one side of her face
drawn out of shape.

Ma said Mary had had a stroke.

After the stroke,
Mary began to get better,

but she could not see well.

As Mary grew stronger,
her eyes grew weaker

until when she could sit up in
the big chair among the pillows,

she could hardly see at all."

Narrator: Mary likely had
viral meningioencephalitis,

and her blindness
deeply affected Laura.

Hill: When Mary went blind,

Pa charged Laura
with being Mary's eyes.

And that role of
describing the world,

describing what was happening
in the outside world

for her sister

made Laura more aware
of the outside world,

more aware of the importance
of vocabulary and description.

And I believe it went on
to make Laura

the writer that she actually
became later on.

Narrator: Mary's blindness
is attributed to scarlet fever

in the novel
"By the Shores of Silver Lake,"

which follows the family

to what would become
De Smet, South Dakota.

Charles Ingalls has a job
as a bookkeeper

with the Chicago
and Northwestern Railway.

He takes full advantage
of the Homestead Act

and files a claim.

McDowell: So, imagine De Smet
when the Ingalls first arrived.

We start to lay out a town.

So we go from the railroad,
and we start to lay out roads.

They're coming on
straight lines.

And from those roads,

we have all of these sections
being laid out.

We divide them up,
and we have schools.

And we have claim shanties
being built.

And we have
churches being built.

And we have
grocery stores coming.

And Charles Ingalls is building
some of those buildings,

so it starts to become a town.

Narrator: And Charles is one
of its founding residents.

Hill:
He was on the school board.

He was a city leader.

He was a prominent citizen
of De Smet

when they finally settled down.

So, he had this kind of
romantic life,

but he was also
very civic-minded.

♪

Narrator: De Smet is where
Charles and Caroline Ingalls

stay for the rest
of their lives,

and it is the setting

for the remainder
of the "Little House" books.

Anderson: I think the book
that gives us

the clearest picture of hardship
is "The Long Winter,"

when they suffered from
near malnutrition and were cold

and without supplies
and truly isolated

in the community
of De Smet, South Dakota.

That's a survival story.

Fraser: The actual event,
you know, which was really known

as the hard winter
was even more horrific

for the family
than she let on in the novel.

They were trapped in this very
small house with no insulation

with another family,

George Masters
and his wife and their baby.

Sarah: During the Long Winter,
there was another couple.

A married couple
and their infant son

were with them in the house
in town for the entire winter.

They were boarders,
and they just seem

to have taken
the perspective that,

"We're not part of this family,
so we're just going to sit."

They didn't contribute.

Fraser:
They did nothing to really help.

And she hated them
for the rest of her life.

[Laughs] And... And the way
she dealt with that in the novel

was to leave them out entirely.

Sarah: She refused to touch that
in "The Long Winter."

She wanted that family to be
a complete unit,

everybody pitching in equally
to see them through.

And she said it would...
It would ruin the picture

that she was trying to make

if she let the Masters family
intrude on that.

Harper: "Storms followed storms
so quickly

that the railroad track
could not be kept open.

The company kept men
shoveling snow

and snow plows working
all they could,

but the snow plows
stuck in the snow

and the snow blew back

faster than the men
could shovel it out."

Narrator: At the end of January,
there was too much snow

for trains to get through,
and food and supplies ran low.

The people of De Smet
began to starve.

Fraser: Eventually,
they got to the point

where it was clear

that somebody was gonna
have to try to go out

during one of these windows
of opportunity between storms

to try to find a farmer
who had seed wheat.

Narrator: Enter Almanzo Wilder,
a homesteader in his 20s,

who volunteered for what seemed
like a suicide mission.

Hill: Laura Ingalls Wilder
sets up the scene

in "The Long Winter."

We have a great deal of suspense
as readers

as to whether
Almanzo and Cap Garland

are gonna find that settler,

and if so, can they persuade him
to sell the seed wheat.

Ultimately, they do.

And then on the drive back,

there's another blizzard
on the horizon.

And Cap and Almanzo
make it back into town

just in the nick of time.

It's a really suspenseful,
dramatic, kind of scary scene.

This was something that
they actually did in real life,

and they saved the town.

♪

Young woman: "And the fear and
the suffering of the long winter

seemed to rise like a dark cloud
and float away on the music.

Spring had come.

The sun was shining warm,
the winds were soft,

and the green grass growing."

Narrator: By the next November,
Mary has gone off to Iowa

to attend a college
for the blind.

Wilder: Mary graduated from
the Iowa College for the Blind

at Vinton, Iowa.

After graduating, she lived
at home with Pa and Ma.

She was always busy
helping Ma with the housework

and with her books and music.

She never regained her sight.

♪

Narrator: Laura takes her first
teaching position at a school

about 8 miles south of De Smet.

She is 16.
And around this time,

Almanzo Wilder
begins to drive her

to and from De Smet
every weekend.

Skurnick: What I remember most
about the romance

is that even when it's not clear
that they're dating

but that Manzo still shows up

and takes her home
every weekend...

She has not asked.

He has not even said
he's going to do it.

He just understands,
and he does it,

and he commits and shows
his commitment that way.

You know, he's not... not even
doing it so he can see her.

He's doing it
so she can see her family.

That is the part
of their courtship

that made me understand
actual courtship.

♪

Narrator: The courtship
continues when Laura returns

to De Smet
and to being a student.

During that year,
she writes an essay

which reads, in part...

Young woman: "Without
an ambition to excel others

and to surpass one's self,

there would be
no superior merit.

To win anything, we must have
the ambition to do so."

Hill: There's that remarkable
scene with Mr. Owen

which occurs
in both "Pioneer Girl"

and later in the "Little House"
books themselves,

where Mr. Owen compliments
the young Laura

on her first exposition,
her first writing assignment.

Young woman: "He looked at her
sharply and said,

'You have written
compositions before?'

'No, sir, ' Laura said.

'This is my first.'

'Well, you should write
more of them.

I would not have believed

that anyone could do so well
the first time.'"

Hill: What I think
is remarkable about that

is not only that
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote

about the scene
both in "Pioneer Girl"

and later
in the "Little House" books,

but that she kept
the original writing assignment

from Mr. Owen
for all of those years.

She still has that,
and she has...

And she kept
all of her scraps of poetry.

For me, that indicates
that Laura Ingalls Wilder

probably had the ambition
to write very early on.

Narrator:
Laura's school days end

when she takes
another teaching job,

this one closer to home
and to Almanzo.

By now, they have affectionate
names for one another...

Manly and Bessie.

Harper: "'I was wondering if you
wanted an engagement ring, '

he answered.

And I gave a startled gasp.

'That would depend, ' I said,
'on who offered it to me.'

'Would you take it from me?'
he asked,

and I said 'Yes!'

Then he kissed me good night,

and I went into the house,

not quite sure
if I was engaged to Manly

or to the starlight
and the prairie."

Narrator: Laura refused
to say the word "obey"

in the wedding vows.

It would set the tone
for their lifelong partnership.

Young woman: "She summoned
all her courage and said,

'Almanzo,
I must ask you something.

Do you want me
to promise to obey you?'

Soberly he answered,
'Of course not.

I know it is
in the wedding ceremony,

but it is only something
that women say.

I never knew one that did it,

nor any decent man
that wanted her to.'

'Well, I am not going to say
I will obey you, ' said Laura.

'I cannot make a promise
that I will not keep,

and, Almanzo, even if I tried,
I do not think

I could obey anybody
against my better judgement.'

'I'd never expect you to, '
he told her."

Sarah: She had the... the...
The presence of mind,

the c... the confidence to say
to her future husband,

"I can't promise this."

Speaks to her strength
of character.

It speaks to her
knowledge of herself.

She knows that
she can't do that.

And she feels comfortable
enough with him

to... to put that forward.

And that he accepts it says
a good deal about him, as well.

Anderson:
Almanzo was perfectly competent

and a strong, hard worker.

But he was willing
to defer to his wife.

And they had a unique
partnership in their marriage

before most marriages were
organized in that fashion.

Before Almanzo made
any purchases or changes

on the farm,
they consulted together.

And if he would do something
rash without asking her,

she made it known that
she really didn't care for that.

Narrator: They are married
in August 1885.

Hill: Laura Ingalls Wilder's
first four years of marriage

with Almanzo
were extraordinarily difficult,

one financial disaster
after another.

Their barn burned down.
Their house burned down.

♪

They lost an infant son.

Almanzo suffered a stroke,

and it left him crippled
for the rest of his life.

Narrator: Laura would later
relive that terrible time

in "The First Four Years,"

a novel she drafted
but never published.

Hill: Very few young couples,
I think, could have faced

as many crises in the first
four years of marriage

as those two did.

The one bright spot
in those first four years

was the birth of Rose,
their daughter.

Narrator: After surviving
so much tragedy in De Smet,

the young family heads south,

eventually landing
in the Ozarks,

lured by the promise of
"the land of big red apples."

Like her parents before her,

Wilder crosses the plains
in a horse-drawn wagon.

She records the trip
in a tiny notebook,

leaving a rare glimpse
of her emotional self.

Harper: "We crossed the
James River, and in 20 minutes,

we reached the top of the bluffs
on the other side.

We all stopped
and looked back at the scene,

and I wished for an artist's eye
or a poet's brain

or even to be able
to tell in good, plain prose

how beautiful it was.

If I had been the Indians,

I would have scalped
more white folks

before I ever
would have left it."

Fraser: She sees the...
You know, the banks

of this... this river

and is, you know,
kind of overcome

with I think everything
she's leaving behind.

You know, she feels
incredibly melancholy.

I think she felt quite keenly
the fact that...

That she and Almanzo

had, essentially,
been failures as farmers

and... and were being driven
out of this place

they could no longer stay in

and... and that there was just
nothing to be done about it.

Narrator: Laura is 27 years old.

The part of her life
that would become her books

is now behind her.

♪

Narrator: In 1894, the Wilders
get their fresh start.

They buy 40 acres
with a one-room cabin

and call it Rocky Ridge Farm.

Laura had a clear vision
of what it could become.

Harper: "Everything we needed to
build it was on the land...

Good oak beams and boards,

stones for the foundations
and the fireplace.

The house would have
large windows

looking West across a brook
over the gentle valleys

and wooded hills
that hid the town.

The kitchen would be big enough

to hold a wood stove for winter.

And in the parlor...

big book cases filled with books

and a hanging lamp
to read them by

on winter evenings
by the fireplace."

Narrator: Laura Ingalls Wilder

would live in
Mansfield, Missouri,

for the next 62 years,

but until she became
a best-selling author,

life was a constant struggle
to make ends meet.

The couple always had
second and third jobs.

Laura raised chickens
and took in boarders.

Almanzo tended to
the apple orchard

and delivered kerosene.

Their young daughter, Rose,
picked huckleberries to sell

and remembered her childhood
none too fondly.

Brenneman: "No one knew
what went on in my mind.

Because I loved my parents,

I would not let them suspect
that I was suffering.

I concealed from them
how much I felt their poverty,

their struggles
and disappointments.

These filled my life, magnified
like horrors in a dream."

Narrator:
In the spring of 1902,

Laura receives word
that her father is dying.

[Bell ringing]

She travels back to De Smet
to see him one last time.

Fraser: It must have been

a really heartbreaking
loss for her,

because she always identified
strongly with her father.

They loved each other.

She always referred to her
earliest memories of him

carrying her, you know,
and singing to her,

and, you know, gazing at her.

And I think she felt a security
and a closeness with him

that she never felt
with anybody else.

Narrator: After Charles dies,
Wilder writes an essay about him

filled with the memories
and music of her childhood.

Harper: "All Father needed to
make him happy was his family,

a new, wild country
to live in or travel over,

good hunting and fishing,
some traps, his gun,

two good horses hitched
to a rain-proof covered wagon,

and his violin."

Narrator: The next year,
Rose leaves home

to finish school in Louisiana.

She is 16.

Woodside: She thought that she
had had the worst childhood ever

and she couldn't wait
to get away from the farm.

For a long time,
she felt that way.

Sarah: She doesn't fit in
the world that she's born into.

It's too small.
It doesn't suit her.

She was stubborn.

She was very, very forceful,
I think, in her opinions.

She taught herself to read.

When she discovered,
like, how to write

she just loved the act
of writing so much

that she was harming
her arm and her hand.

They had to make her stop,

and she was not
but 4 or 5 years old.

She just had this fascination
right from the get-go

with language,
with words, with writing.

Narrator: Fittingly, Rose went
on to a career as a writer

and then urges her mother
to do the same.

Sarah: Rose had always
had this preoccupation

with her parents'
financial stability

and for quite some time
is urging her mother

to do something in addition
to supplement the farm income.

So Rose encourages her to write.

Narrator: And Laura begins
writing articles

for the Missouri Ruralist
in 1911.

Anderson: Laura Ingalls Wilder
earned money

as a country journalist
and the secretary treasurer

of the Mansfield Farm
Loan Association.

John:
The articles that she wrote,

about 1,000 words twice a month,

were stories
that helped people under...

Mainly women,
because it's a women's page...

Understand who they were
and what they were doing,

how they could be
better farmers,

how they could be better
community citizens.

It's all about improving people,

making them happier,

and she's a... she's an ethicist.

Hill: She already had an arsenal
of writing skills under her belt

when she started writing
the "Little House" books.

Anderson: And I think

Laura Ingalls Wilder's
early poverty

challenged her to work hard,
use her talents,

and give 120% effort

to edge them into middle-class
somewhat security.

[Train whistle blows]

Narrator: In 1915, Wilder
takes a train to San Francisco

to visit Rose.

Sarah: When the World's Fair
is happening in San Francisco,

Laura goes out there with an eye
toward learning more from Rose,

observing the Fair, you know,
having... having this broader

sort of pool of experiences
to pull from,

and also to be tutored by Rose

so that her writing
can be more commercial

or reach a broader audience.

Narrator:
Rose is making $30 a week

writing fictionalized,
first-person accounts

of criminals, hero cops,
and stool pigeons

for the San Francisco Bulletin.

And her stories are advertised
as having

"the authority of truth,
the power of reality."

Hill:
Rose became her mother's editor

and urged Laura Ingalls Wilder
to think big,

to think beyond just writing
for the Missouri Ruralist.

Narrator: Wilder returns home,

newly determined to find
a larger audience.

At Rose's suggestion,
she eventually writes an article

about her kitchen.

It sells to
Country Gentleman Magazine

in 1924.

Laura appears to have bristled
during the editing process.

Brenneman:
"I'm sorry that, as you say,

knowing it was my work that sold
takes some of the joy out of it.

Dearest Mama Bess, in some ways,
you're like a frolicsome dog

that won't stand still
to listen.

Please, please, listen.

All I did on your story
was an ordinary re-write job.

You must understand that what
sold was your article, edited.

You must study
how it was edited, and why,

and just what was done,

so that next time, you can do
the editing yourself."

Narrator: When Caroline Ingalls
dies that same year,

Wilder publishes
an emotional column

in the Missouri Ruralist
about her mother.

Harper: "The world seemed
a lonesome place

when Mother has passed away
and only memories are left us.

Memories.

Sometimes I wonder if they
are our treasures in heaven

or the consuming fires
of torment."

Fraser: And it was really
remarkable as a statement,

because she's really reacting
to her mother's death.

And it shows you how very few

spontaneous remarks
we have from her.

Most of what she wrote

was very considered
and restrained and controlled.

But that one passage
about her mother's death

clearly just came in the moment.

Narrator: Laura turns again
to her family memories,

writing to an elderly aunt
in 1925

asking for details about
her mother's childhood.

Harper: "Dear Aunt Martha,
could you, I wonder,

tell the story of those days
and any special stories

that you remember about
the things that happened then?

Just tell it in your own words

as you would tell
about those times

if only you could talk to me."

♪

Narrator: In 1928, Rose...

Now Rose Wilder Lane
after a failed marriage...

Returns home
to live at Rocky Ridge.

By now, she has travelled
the world

and is a highly paid writer.

With her earnings, Rose builds
her parents a modern house

on a corner of the farm,
and she spends lavishly.

Then the Financial Crash of 1929
and the resulting Depression

leaves the whole family
in terrible straits.

In her diary, Rose recalled
just how bad things had become.

Brenneman: "Our accounts
are gone. This is the end.

Price levels have fallen
below costs."

Narrator: By 1931, Laura had
written the story of her life...

"Pioneer Girl."

Fraser: Writing the memoir
is both her lifelong dream...

You know, she has talked
about this for a long time.

But it's also very
economically motivated,

because I think Laura looks
at her daughter

and sees a woman who

has been very successful
in a lot of ways,

has made a lot of money.

Woodside:
Rose took the manuscript,

and she typed it all up,
and she edited it as she went

smoothed it over and gave it
a little bit of structure,

but she didn't do much
to it at all.

And the next time
she went to New York

to try to get work
and see her agent,

she tried to sell it.

Narrator:
With the Depression on,

a memoir about the harsh
realities of frontier life

held no interest for publishers.

"Pioneer Girl"
is turned down everywhere.

Without consulting her mother,
Rose takes some passages

from "Pioneer Girl,"

turns them into "When Grandma
Was a Little Girl,"

and helps launch her mother
as a children's author.

Woodside: When you look at
"Little House in the Big Woods,"

we see a lot of proof

that Rose had a great deal
of involvement in...

In major revisions to that
once they were expanding on it.

Narrator:
"Little House in the Big Woods,"

with illustrations
by Helen Sewell,

was published in April 1932.

The New York Times
book review praised

its “refreshingly genuine
and lifelike quality,"

noting that "the portrait
of Laura's father

is drawn with loving care
and reality."

Fraser: I think
her relationship to her father

is kind of unique in children's
literature in a lot of ways.

There are a lot of bad fathers

[Laughing]
in children's literature,

a lot of scary,

punitive, even abusive fathers.

But her relationship
to Charles Ingalls

was really special
in... in its closeness.

John: Pa getting down
on his hands and knees

and playing mad dog
with the girls

and playing his fiddle

and telling all the stories
and everything,

I think Pa was an unusual
father for the time.

He seems very modern

in the way in which he connected
with his girls.

He didn't have any boys.

Maybe that had something
to do with it.

♪

Newsreel narrator: "Almost
immediately upon taking office,

the new President closed
all banks by proclamation."

Sarah: Politically,
she's writing at a time

when FDR is in the White House
and is apparently never leaving,

and she doesn't like him
very much at all.

And she feels that people

are just... can't find
their bootstraps.

And I think that informs the way

that she tells
the story of her life

to... to make the Ingalls family
so independent

and so self-reliant

when that was not,
in fact, always the case.

Newsreel narrator:
"Aimed at benefiting the farmer

by reducing wheat, corn,
and cotton crops,

the AAA was enacted."

Woodside: They both were sort of
physically ill over FDR

and the New Deal.

They felt that it was just

a really inappropriate
response to hard times.

They had seen hard times.

Why did the government
want to help people?

And Laura thought that everybody
was starting to whine

in response to the New Deal.

She just couldn't stand it.
It made her sick.

Harper:
"Lord, give me patience!

How exasperating a bunch of
Communists in Washington can be!

[Sighs]
I suppose all we can do

is await their pleasure.

Give them time enough,
and they will put us all

on the Federal payroll
or on the relief."

Narrator: Ironically,
the Wilders themselves

had already benefited
from a federal program...

A farm loan taken
when Laura was working

at the Mansfield
Farm Loan Association.

♪

Debuting in the early days
of the Depression,

"Little House in the Big Woods"

seemed tailor-made
for the times.

Fraser:
And so I think she had

a bit of a message there
for children about poverty,

that it's nothing
to be ashamed of.

If there's love in the family,
if there's pleasures

in life from a simple meal
or from music,

that that's enough in life.

Anderson:
Without being overly moralistic,

the "Little House"
books stressed

self-responsibility,
community cooperation,

taking care of one's
needs oneself,

and with these goals, a person
could be free and independent.

Narrator:
After such a good reception

for "Little House
in the Big Woods,"

the question was
what to do next.

Woodside: Laura's idea evidently
was, "Well, let...

Well, okay, we've done
my... my life story,

so now let's do
my husband's life story."

Wilder: "Farmer Boy" was written

from facts and stories
Almanzo told me.

They are all true.

The old house just as described
in the book

still stands on the old farm
where Almanzo worked and played

and went fishing on rainy days.

Woodside:
Laura sat down with Almanzo

probably in the evenings
and mined his memory for things,

and she wrote a manuscript
of "Farmer Boy,"

and then Rose edited it fairly
quickly, and they sent it in,

and they had to rewrite
that one completely.

Narrator: As part of improving
the manuscript,

Rose took a research trip

to Malone, New York,
her father's birthplace.

After substantial revisions
with Rose,

Laura resubmits "Farmer Boy."

Raymond: "My Dear Mrs. Wilder,

I have finished reading
the new version of 'Farmer Boy.'

And I feel it is
a much more cohesive

piece of work than before."

Hill: Somewhere as she was
writing that second book,

she began to think
in broader terms.

So when we get to
"Little House on the Prairie,"

that's a totally different
kind of book,

and here, for the first time,

we kind of see
Laura Ingalls Wilder's vision

for the series about the West

and about how the West
was settled.

Harper:
"I am satisfied with the title

'Little House on the Prairie.'

I suggested it
thinking it had a selling value

because of the other
'Little House' stories."

Narrator:
"Little House On The Prairie"

is followed by
"On the Banks of Plum Creek,"

and the books will soon
be marketed as a series.

"Plum Creek" is the first
of Wilder's books

to receive a runner-up honor
from the Newbery Awards,

the coveted stamp
from librarians

that signals distinguished
children’s literature.

Fraser: I think the books
had great word of mouth

among librarians
and... and school teachers,

who began reading them
to their classes.

Teacher: Describe Laura.

What is her personality like?

Anderson:
They simply became part

of many, many teachers'
curriculums.

And I think the teachers loved
reading the books

and introducing them
to the children.

And the children responded well.

Narrator: When "Plum Creek"
is about to go on sale,

Wilder appears
at the Detroit Book Fair,

her first and only time
on a national stage.

There, her description of how
the "Little House" books

came to be becomes a bigger
and better story.

Harper: "I wanted the children
now to understand more

about the beginning of things...

To know what is behind
the things they see,

what it is that made America
as they know it."

Narrator: With these remarks
to booksellers,

Wilder is mythologizing...

About the perpetual promise
of moving West...

and about herself.

Sarah: Laura Ingalls Wilder
had a lot of responsibility

in... in forming the myth.

Just always insisted
that everything in the books

was true, true, true.

And Rose also, you know,
went on with that legacy,

that insistence
that this was biographical

more than fiction.

And it's... it's just not so.

Narrator: And yet at the close
of her speech,

Wilder pointedly says,

"All I have told is true
but not the whole truth."

Fraser: [Chuckling] It's very
clear that she wanted to believe

her own fiction.

You know, she began trying
to sell it as the truth.

And so that's, you know, what
we keep coming back to it for

is... is to f...
Try to figure that out.

And yet, part of the joy

of reading the books
is... is their emotionalism.

And that's what keeps people
coming back to it.

It's not because
they're political texts.

It's not because they have
something to say about,

you know, pulling yourself up
by your bootstraps,

although they do.

But that's not why people
read them.

Narrator: The letters
between Rose and Laura

during writing
of the fifth novel,

"By the Shores of Silver Lake,"

reveal how mother
and daughter worked together.

Woodside: Rose had the gift
of structuring the novel.

She understood
if you're narrating a novel,

it must be through whatever
narrative voice you choose.

Laura did not know
anything about that,

so she would say...

There's a famous letter
where she writes her about...

You know,
"This is Laura's story.

You must stay inside Laura."

Brenneman: "Try always
to make sight, scent,

sensation immediate.

'So Laura took the lines
in her hands, ' is better than,

'so Laura drove
the black ponies.'

Get it all directly,
as sight, emotion,

thought, scent.

Don't say, 'It reminded Laura
of other times.'

Say, 'This was like
other times.'

Stay inside Laura."

Narrator:
There were many arguments

over how "By the Shores
of Silver Lake" should start.

Brenneman: "Dear Mama Bess,
I still think the place to begin

is on the house on Plum Creek.

There are four years to skip
if Laura is 12.

She was 8 in Plum Creek
when she started to school.

Therefore, the more nearly

you can tie the two books
together, the better,

and the house on Plum Creek
will do that.

It seems to me
that this book is about

railroad and town-building.

Let's get the theme of this one
clear right away."

Harper: "Rose dearest,

to make the changes
you want to make in Silver Lake,

it will have to be
practically rewritten.

The theme of Silver Lake
is homesteading.

I am sure this is all plain
in the story.

I have given you a true picture
of the time

and the place and the people.

Please don't blur it.

But I know you won't."

Brenneman: "Dear Mama Bess, you
are one of the very few writers

in the country who would
turn down a collaboration

with Rose Wilder Lane,
but go ahead.

You certainly are
handling the material

much better all the time,

and if you don't want
this book touched,

you're absolutely right
not to have it touched."

Narrator:
And if Rose had prevailed,

Mary would never
have been blind.

Brenneman: "I am still doubtful
about Mary's being blind.

Why? If she must be blind,
her blindness

should be brought in
as the end of an illness.

I can handle this,
if you agree to it.

Only write me a letter

telling me all about
what actually happened."

Narrator: But Laura insisted.

Harper: "I can't take Mary along
in the story

as she should be
if she were not blind.

She would not fit in.

A touch of tragedy
makes the story truer to life

and showing the way
we all took it

illustrates the spirit
of the times and the frontier."

Narrator: Wilder's description
of Mary's blindness

is arguably one of the most
affecting scenes

in all of her books.

Young woman: "Her blue eyes
were still beautiful,

but they did not know
what was before them,

and Mary herself could never
look through them again

to tell Laura what she was
thinking without saying a word."

Narrator: While they are working
on "Silver Lake,"

Rose writes to her mother
about their partnership

and gives her
very specific advice.

Brenneman: "As to similarity
in our writing, of course.

You often write lines
and whole paragraphs

that I feel are
what I would have written

or, anyway, wish I had.

What you haven't developed
is structure,

a kind of under-rhythm in
the whole body of the writing,

and a 'pointing up'
here and there.

English is
an impressionistic language,

an onomatopoeic language.

It has the quality of a sunrise
or a landscape,

a meaning in feeling.

Essentially, it is poetry."

Woodside: I would call it
a full-blown collaboration.

They were partners
in the project.

They conceived it together,
they wrote it together,

and they edited it together.

Hill: She was a fine editor.

And I think we're all indebted
to her editorial skills

on the "Little House" books.

Fraser:
She's not easy to like always,

and yet it's very doubtful

that we... we would have
the "Little House" books

if it weren't for Rose
with her encouragement,

her urging her mother on,

her bullying her mother
sometimes,

her professional connections

to agents and publishers
in New York.

She was crucial
in this whole thing.

Anderson: Rose was at the apex
of her career,

writing short stories,
magazine serials,

novels, and works of nonfiction.

She wanted no taint of being
involved with children's books.

The children's book
publishing field in the 1930s

and '40s was miniscule

in comparison
with what it is today.

And it was simply not Rose's
wish to get recognized

as the co-author or editor
of her mother's books.

And Rose denied any connection
with those books

to her dying day.

Narrator:
In fact, Rose had appropriated

her mother's childhood
for her own material.

Her novel
"Let the Hurricane Roar"

is based on the Ingalls family.

But Rose would become best known
for her political theories.

Her non-fiction book
"The Discovery of Freedom"

was published in 1943

and became fuel for the founding
of the Libertarian Party.

Around the same time, Laura's
editor, Ursula Nordstrom,

decides it's time for a new
edition and new illustrations.

She taps Garth Williams,

the illustrator of children's
book "Stuart Little"

and later "Charlotte's Web."

Williams meets Wilder
at her farmhouse in 1947.

Williams: She was very lively.

And she was fixing her garden,
and I sat in the car.

She didn't know I was there.

And I watched her,
and she was picking flowers.

And she bent right down,
and she picked up flowers

without any trouble at all.

And I said, "Well, my goodness,

she looks about 20 or 30 years
younger than she really is."

Narrator: Wilder shared
her family photos, artifacts,

and the details of her life.

Williams wrote down
his impressions.

Man: "An architect would have
described the sod house

on the bank of Plum Creek

as extremely primitive,
unhealthy, and undesirable.

But to Laura's fresh young eyes,
it was a pleasant house,

surrounded by flowers and with
the music of a running stream

and rustling leaves.

She understood the meaning
of hardship and struggle.

She never glamorized anything,

yet she saw the loveliness
in everything.

This was the way
the illustrator had to follow...

No glamorizing for him, either."

Narrator: Shortly before
the new editions were released,

editor Nordstrom attended

to some troubling aspects
of the text.

A letter from the aunt
of an 8-year-old girl

took issue with a passage from
"Little House on the Prairie"

that read,
"There were no people.

Only Indians lived there."

Responding to the complaint,
Nordstrom said...

Woman: "I must admit to you
that no one here realized

that those words
read as they did.

Reading them now,
it seems unbelievable to me

that you are the only person
who has picked this up

in the 20 years
since the book was published."

Narrator: "A stupid blunder
of mine," Wilder wrote.

"Of course Indians are people,

and I did not mean
to imply that they were not."

The sentence was changed to
"There were no settlers."

Beane: So, there was the line,

"There were no people,
only Indians,"

when they're coming
into the territory.

And in the 1950s,

they struck out the word
"people"

and put in "settlers."

And it still said, "There were
no settlers, only Indians."

And why are we "only"?
What does that mean for us?

And what message does this
give our children?

John: They had been there
for centuries, if not millennia.

So Laura was typical
of her times

and not really having
an understanding of

or appreciating
the Native American history.

Park: Even as a young child,
there were parts of the books

that made me really
uncomfortable or unhappy,

that I just didn't like reading.

And how this manifested
to me personally was

there's a passage in which
Laura is fascinated

by an Indian baby's
very dark eyes.

Young woman:
"Then came a mother riding,

with a baby in a basket
on each side of her pony.

Laura looked straight
into the bright eyes

of the little baby nearer her.

Only its small head showed
above the basket's rim.

Its hair was as black as a crow,

and its eyes were black as night
when no stars shine.

Those black eyes looked
deep into Laura's eyes,

and she looked deep down

into the blackness
of that little baby's eyes,

and she wanted
that one little baby."

Park: I had very dark eyes.

So in my childhood mind,

when Ma said horrible things
about Native Americans,

it felt like she was saying
horrible things about me.

Gay: I think I first started
reading the books in 1981.

So we had very different
sensibilities then.

It didn't even occur to anyone
to think anything

of the depictions
of Indians in those books.

And I think that's
deeply unfortunate,

and it shows just how much work
we had to do

with regards to recognizing
the racism of those books.

Narrator: Nordstrom also asked
Wilder to consider

cutting a scene from
"Little Town on the Prairie"

in which Pa appears in blackface
and sings a racist song.

Wilder agreed, and some of the
offending lyrics were trimmed,

but the word "darkies"
and the illustration

can still be found
in the book today.

Hill:
I know some colleagues have said

that they wish those scenes
would be cut

from new versions of the book.

I don't agree with that.

It's very disturbing,
but it is part of our history,

and if we don't talk
about these issues honestly

with our children,

we are jeopardizing their future

and the future of our country.

Gay: The books just have to be
taught in context,

and the proper context,
not revisionist context.

Teacher: Brainstorm
in your groups some new names

that may be more respectful
to the Native American culture.

Erdrich: What I see these books
as, basically,

I would say they're like
"Gone with the Wind" for kids.

Kids are certainly
gonna love "Little House."

Grown-ups like
"Gone with the Wind."

But what is it, really?

It's a way of valorizing

the things that destroyed
entire peoples

in this country.

Narrator: The racist scenes

moved the American
Library Association to rename

its Laura Ingalls Wilder
Lifetime Achievement Award.

♪

In 2018, it was changed

to the Children's Literature
Legacy Award.

Goldberg: They took the name
off of the award

because they didn't feel
they could hold up

Laura Ingalls Wilder
as a contemporary role model

for young readers.

The books are dehumanizing
to children of color.

And they have a lot
of really damaging messages

for... for white children.

Park: I was hurt by those books.

And that took me 50 years
to reconcile.

Because the books that
we love as children,

oh, they're part of us. Right?

They're... They're... They're
so much a part of our identity.

♪

Narrator: While her books
were growing in popularity,

Laura and Almanzo
spent their time downsizing.

They sold most of their land

and moved back
into their original farmhouse.

Rose had settled in Connecticut.

And in the fall of 1949,

Wilder's beloved Manly suffers
a heart attack and dies.

Her farmer boy,

her steadfast partner
of 64 years, was gone.

Hill: Almanzo Wilder, I think,
was a very tolerant man.

He had a headstrong wife,

and he had
a headstrong daughter.

But I've always viewed Almanzo
as being a kind of feminist.

And he certainly
emerges that way

toward the end
of "These Happy Golden Years"

when he woos Laura.

So I think he gave her
the freedom

to be the woman
she needed to be.

And for the time, that was
very unusual and very rare.

Anderson: After Almanzo Wilder
died in 1949, Laura was bereft.

They had had such
a companionable,

successful marriage.

Fraser: I think she was
quite lonely after that.

She mentions
being lonely in letters.

Rose came intermittently
after Almanzo died.

Laura's health was...
Was not great.

You know, she was pretty frail.

There were some kids
who lived nearby

who kind of,
you know, worked for her.

[Laughing] You know,
she would pay them a quarter,

and they would go
fetch the mail for her.

Anderson:
I think she was very gratified

by the success
of the "Little House" books.

It was probably the culmination

of her long, hardworking life.

She loved the fact that she had
memorialized her own family,

preserved her father's stories,

achieves a degree
of financial success.

She loved the letters
that children sent to her.

And friends that would
drop in would remark,

"I seldom came here
to visit Mrs. Wilder

and didn't find her
working on her fan mail."

Narrator: A few days
after her 90th birthday,

with Rose by her side,
Laura dies at home.

Rose, Wilder's only child,
would be her only beneficiary.

Rose dies in 1968.

Her New York Times obituary
does not mention

her famous mother
or the "Little House" books.

Mother and daughter
both kept their silence.

It would not be long
before researchers found

the evidence of
the collaboration between them.

Woodside: It was a shock.
It was a total shock.

Well, that was because the two
women were heavily invested

in keeping that secret.

Narrator: And though
Laura and Rose were gone,

the "Little House" books were
about to take on a new life.

♪

After more than 40 years
on bookshelves,

Laura Ingalls Wilder's
characters

came to life
on the small screen.

Gilbert:
I remember my mom telling me

that they were going to make it
into a television series

and that I was gonna audition
for the role of Laura.

And I remember being
incredibly excited about that.

Laura:
"Look at the country girls."

Made me so mad
I wanted to smack her good.

Narrator: Melissa Gilbert played
Laura on the NBC TV series

"Little House on the Prairie"
for nine seasons.

Gilbert: Loved that book.
I loved her character.

I loved the adventures.

I think like all young girls
who read those books,

she had me hook,
line, and sinker.

And I wanted to be like her.

Little did I know, you know,
it was not long later

that I was going
to get to play her.

Laura: I beg you to forgive me
for what I did.

Narrator: Alison Arngrim played
mean-girl Nellie Oleson.

Nellie: You are forgiven.

Narrator: Dean Butler
played Almanzo Wilder.

Butler: I had no previous
knowledge of these books

or these people
before doing the series.

And now I can say with a...
With a great confidence

and happiness that they are
a part of my life forever.

TV show narrator: The timeless
series you grew up with

comes to life like never before.

Narrator:
The show, watched by millions,

has never gone off the air.

It is still in syndication
and streaming.

Friendly: And I think one of the
reasons why the television show

is so popular is they got
to live with this family,

this idealized version
of a family,

for nine seasons.

Narrator: Trip Friendly's
father, producer Ed Friendly,

turned the books
into the TV show,

and it remains
a family business.

Friendly: So he had an enormous,
abiding love for the West

and for the history
of our country

and the settlers
and the pioneers.

And I think he felt
it was great,

classic American literature

that should be adapted
for television.

Skurnick:
So the TV show, of course,

as any "Little House" reader
will say, it looked wrong.

You know,
that's not their house.

That's not the sunlight.
That's not the coziness.

That's definitely not Pa!

♪

Goldberg: The drama in the books
comes from the hardships

of how they were living,

where they were living,
and when they were living.

TV has to always add
a layer of sentimentality,

and, you know,
there's more humor

in the television show, I think.

They made it more for TV.

They made it more
for an audience

that wanted to see the tropes
of family television

that they were used to seeing
but set in the 19th century.

Gilbert: We also took
a lot of dramatic license,

clearly, with our show.

We never left Walnut Grove.

That is not exactly
how it went for Laura.

I think our show was
an interpretation

of what the "Little House"
stories were

applied to that time in America
in the 1970s.

Narrator: The TV show
brought legions of new readers

to the books.

Butler: I have signed books
for the little girl

who got the book
from her mother,

who got the book
from her grandmother.

Families are sharing these books

and the "Little House"
experience together.

I think that's one of
the beauties of the show.

Narrator: The renewed interest
in all things "Little House"

included the actual houses.

Schodorf: And when the pilot
TV show came on,

and it was two hours
about Kansas,

and "Little House
on the Prairie," out here

in the middle of the prairie
near Independence, Kansas,

we started getting streams
of cars driving by.

We've lasted for 45 years.

Every year, people
come from all 50 states

and 35, 40 countries.

Stan:
After the TV show aired,

we had thousands of people
coming here.

Because of the crush of people,

my parents couldn't handle them
in the kitchen anymore.

Narrator:
Today, all of the places

associated with
Laura Ingalls Wilder

are museums...

Out-of-the-way destinations
throughout the Midwest...

For fans looking to connect
with the pioneering family

they feel they know.

Redman: I love seeing

how personal
some of these items are,

the connection that people
have with them,

and just how much they care.

A lot of people really like
her library.

They're very interested
in what she read,

what her literary
influences were.

Pa's fiddle, as well.

Scrivener: I'm David Scrivener,
and I have here Pa's fiddle.

[Cheers and applause]

[Fiddle playing]

♪

♪

Arngrim: Yeah, if you had
told me that 45 years later,

40 years later, we'd have
these events and TV shows

and go to these sites,

never in a million,
trillion years

if you told me that I would
be talking to people

from every country on earth

who would be crying
at meeting me

and the rest of the cast...
impossible.

Narrator:
The yearning to know more about
the beloved author continued.

In 1971, "The First Four Years,"
Wilder's book

about the early, difficult days
of her marriage, was released.

Its different style and tone
raised new questions.

By that time, Rose's role
was already being examined.

Woodside: The amazing thing
about this is that scholars knew

and were writing about Rose's
involvement from the 1970s,

but people
just didn't accept it.

Narrator: Later in her life,

Rose became known
for her politics.

Woodside: Rose was sort of
a rock star, in today's slang,

to the Libertarians.

Narrator: And some passages,

particularly in the last
two "Little House" books,

suggest her political hand
at work.

Young woman: "She thought...

Americans won't obey any king
on earth.

Americans are free.

That means they have to obey
their own consciences.

No king bosses Pa.
He has to boss himself."

Woodside:
Many of us, myself included,

did not realize
the political undertones

to much of the series
and did not understand the ways

in which political messages
were put into dramatic scenes.

I think that, for Laura, it was
absolutely not conscious at all.

I think, for Rose, it was
her idea of what is truth.

So, in that sense,
it wasn't conscious, either.

It was Rose being Rose.

NARRATOR: "Pioneer Girl,"

Wilder's early attempt
to tell her story,

appeared in 2014,

84 years
after it had been written.

It quickly became
a publishing sensation,

as Wilder's 19th-century
stories climbed

to the top of 21st-century
best-seller lists.

They resonate to this day.

♪

Sarah: The popularity

is a really interesting
phenomenon to me,

because this is a story
of tremendous hardship.

And yet it makes so many
people feel so secure.

It's emotional comfort food.

Gay: They were so engaging,

and they were
so beautifully written,

and they were so charming.

Like, that I can remember
details from those books,

literally, f...
Almost 40 years later,

and I still remember the book

the first time I read it
as clear as day.

And I can't say that
for books I read last week.

Fraser: She's born just shortly
after the end of the Civil War

and lives until 1957.

The covered wagon to the
atomic bomb is a real stretch.

And, you know, it's...
It's an amazing life,

not only in... in that sense,

in the sort of larger sense
of what has happened to society,

but just what she has
been able to achieve.

You know, was born in...
In a log cabin

in the woods in Wisconsin

and barely is able to, you know,
put two cents together

and dies with an obituary
in the New York Times

celebrating her career
as a writer.

So, it was unimaginable, really,
what she was able to accomplish.

Narrator: Nearly a century after
her first book was published,

Laura Ingalls Wilder's voice
is still heard.

Harper:
"Dear Children of Chicago,

I was born in the little house
in the big woods of Wisconsin

just 80 years ago
the 7th of this month,

and I am calling this
my birthday party.

The 'Little House' books
are stories of long ago.

The way we live and your schools
are much different now."

Teacher: Three or four days
the blizzard lasted.

That's a long time to sit
in a cold shanty, isn't it?

Harper: "But the real things
haven't changed.

It is still best to be honest
and truthful,

to make the most
of what we have,

to be happy
with simple pleasures,

and to be cheerful and have
courage when things go wrong.

With love to you all and best
wishes for your happiness,

I am sincerely your friend,
Laura Ingalls Wilder."

♪

♪

♪

♪

Announcer: The National
Endowment for the Humanities,

bringing you the stories
that define us.

♪

Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.