Lane conveniently forgot to mention that the Ingallses did take help when they needed it, gratefully accepting Christmas barrels and donated turkeys, eating the Wilder brothers’ seed wheat in the Hard Winter, and receiving state aid to send Mary to the college for the blind. And, of course, there was the land in the Osage Diminished Reserve: they took that without ever paying for it. In Burr Oak, when they had debts they could not cover, they skipped out on them.
