Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Caroline Fraser

Growing up, she could count her possessions on her fingers. One tin cup. One slate, for school. One hair ribbon. A doll her mother made her. Clothes and shoes were hand-me-downs:

The dispossession of the Dakota, the Homestead Act of 1862, and the war that they touched off set the stage for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life.

By 1867, there were only fifty Dakota left in Minnesota.67 That year, a baby girl was born just across the Mississippi, in a little house in the Big Woods.