I am well into “Prairie Fires” by Caroline
Fraser, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder who is best known as the author of
the Little House children’s books. I have not read these books nor have I seen
what I believe to have been a rather saccharine TV series “The Little House on
the Prairie.” I have a more general interest in the early settlement of the
American West and the complex set of relationships between the government which
wanted the west populated but which was largely indifferent to the plight of
early settlers who had been encouraged to go and farm in what would now be
considered hopelessly unsuitable locations, the railway barons who strongly
boosted these desert areas in order to gouge money out of the hapless
immigrants (which many of them were) and the pioneers themselves whose optimism
in the face of ludicrous odds is a miracle of hope over expectation.
Ingalls Wilder lived until 1957 having become
famous and comfortably well off, but her early life, part of which was lived in
a mud cave dug into a river bank, is an extraordinary tale of transition from
extreme poverty and isolation to mid twentieth century affluence.
For a working definition of the term “The
American Dream” you could do worse than read Caroline Fraser’s book. She also
gives substantial and sympathetic consideration to the oft-betrayed and
dislocated Native Americans whose traditional lands were routinely confiscated
even after the government had signed treaties pledging to keep the settlers
away.
For the last word on the broken dreams of
westward pioneers you need Jonathan Raban’s “Bad Land.” An unqualified
masterpiece.
