Who's Cribbing from Whom?

Ok, I'm kidding with that title. I recently finished reading Caddie Woodlawn for the first time. How did a girl who loved pioneer stories as much as I did as a child grow into adulthood without reading this book?!! Well, that's a question for another time. My point tonight is to talk about the similarities I kept noticing between Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink and the Little House book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

There were a number of events that happened to the girls in both stories - a prairie fire, encounters with the Indians, interaction with a overly prim girl, an unruly student who threatened to disrupt the school, the disappearance of a beloved dog, a potentially life-threatening dunk in a body of water. I know it's not the case, but it's almost like one author was copying ideas from the other. I checked the publication dates, and it's sort of ironic, I think, that both Caddie Woodlawn and Little House on the Prairie were published in 1935. There just must have been certain experiences that were common in pioneer communities. Some, like the prairie fires, were due to the landscape; some, like the encounters with the Indians, were due to the proximity of the different cultures; some, like prim cousin Anabelle and snotty Nellie Olsen, are just a part of human nature, regardless of the time or place.

The thing that is interesting is the way the different authors develop these similar experiences. Let's just use as an example the threat of a possible Indian attack. Here's an excerpt from Caddie Woodlawn:

"After dark, sentries were stationed about the farmhouse to keep watch during the night, and the women and children made their beds on the floor of the parlor, after the bedrooms were filled. No one undressed that night, and fires were kept burning in the kitchen and dining room for the men to warm by when they changed their sentry duty. Windows were shuttered and lanterns covered or shaded when carried outside. A deep silence settled over the farm. They did not wish to draw the Indians' attention by needless noise or light."

Now, here's an excerpt from Little House on the Prairie:

"Laura crept out of bed and huddled against Ma's knee. And Mary, left all alone, crept after her and huddled close, too. Pa stayed by the window, watching."
"The drums seemed to beat in Laura's head. They seemed to beat deep inside her. The wild, fast yipping yells were worse than wolves. Something worse was coming, Laura knew it. Then it came - the Indian war-cry."
"A nightmare is not so terrible as that night was. A nightmare is only a dream, and when it is worst you wake up. But this was real and Laura could not wake up. She could not get away from it."
"When the war-cry was over, Laura knew it had not got her yet. She was still in the dark house and she was pressed close against Ma."

I enjoyed Caddie Woodlawn, and I will definitely be recommending it to my 11-year-old daughter. But I have to admit, I like Laura Ingalls Wilder's version of the pioneer life better. Her description makes me feel like I was right there, hearing that terrifying cry in the dark. I guess that's the difference between telling about your own pioneer experience (which Wilder was doing) and telling the stories of someone else's experience passed down to you (which Brink was doing).

A Little Jewel

I'm a sucker for bargain books. When I found The Matchlock Gun by Walter D. Edmonds as a bargain book, I picked it up for the kids, knowing nothing about it but that it was a Newberry winner. I'm so glad I did. I'm also glad that one of the kids "forgot" to put it back on the bookshelf so that it was lying on the kitchen table last Saturday while I was eating my lunch. I idly opened to the first page and was quickly enthralled.

This is a retelling of a true story from the pioneer days of New York State, when there was no "United States." The French and Indians are sweeping down into the frontier settlements, burning homes and killing settlers in the outlying areas. The book begins when Teunis Van Alstyne is leaving home for militia duty because of rumors of more raids. He leaves his wife, Gertrude, and their two young children home alone with reassurances that the militia will stop the Indians before they could threaten the Van Alstyne home.

He's wrong. Fortunately, one of the militia men is able to warn Gertrude that Indians are near, and the rest of the book relates the story of the plan Gertrude makes to protect her family using the only weapon they had available -- an antique Spanish gun that none of them are strong enough to hold.

I was impressed as I read it by the ingenuity and courage that Gertrude showed, and by the discipline and courage 10-year-old Edward showed. If either of them had failed, the entire family would no doubt have been murdered. But they don't fail, and the story lived on, handed down generation to generation until Walter Edmonds came across it and wrote it in a book.

I like this kind of story. It gives me new appreciation for what the pioneers did. Sure, we look back on it now and judge it as ethically wrong to push the Native Americans off their land. But you've got to admire the individuals who stuck with it through hardship for the dream of a better life for their families.

Something else I think is funny in this story -- Gertrude refused to go to her mother-in-law's brick house. She says it's because she thinks they'll be just as safe at their own home, but I can read between the lines -- there's no love lost between those two women. Gertrude would rather face the Indians alone than knuckle under to her mother-in-law!

Entry for August 17, 2007 - Rubber-necking at a Car Wreck

Pam Conrad's story of Nebraska pioneers, Prairie Songs, has a title that alludes (to me) to images of meadowlarks and wind in the grass, a peaceful scene. I think the title is misleading in that way -- though don't get me wrong -- I wouldn't change the title. After some thinking, the title seems right -- but only after some thinking.

The story starts with the arrival of a young doctor and his pregnant wife from New York City (I think -- the book doesn't give some details. It's like the narrator assumes we know them or that they don't matter.) to pioneer on the plains of Nebraska. The narrator of the story is a young girl whose family lives three miles away from the new arrivals, apparently their closest neighbors. The doctor, though citified with his waxed mustache, seems to adjust pretty well. His wife, Emmaline, is the problem. She is a beautiful and refined lady who makes the young narrator see her mother as a plain, brown walnut. Emmaline wears violet dresses with hoopskirts and perfume. She has trunk after trunk of books she has brought from the East. She abhors the fact she will be living in a sod house and burning cow chips, but she accepts it at first, not cheerfully, I suppose, but with a sort of resigned grace. It doesn't take too long, though, for the reader to know she's not going to make it. And from that point on, I read the book with the sort of grostesque fascination that people driving by a car wreck feel -- you don't really want to see the horrible details, yet you can't keep from looking.

I won't give away what happens to her in the end, but I will say I was surprised by the "weapon" that brought her final destruction. It's very appropriate, though.

The story really isn't about what happens to Emmaline, though. It's about what happens to Louisa (the girl who narrates the story). At first, Louisa is sort of ashamed of her mother in comparison to the beautiful Emmaline, but at the end, she "realized she didn't look at all like a walnut . . . . My momma was truly a beautiful lady . . . . Not beautiful, maybe, like Mrs. Berryman had been, but beautiful in a way that made me feel good inside."

That started me thinking about what it would take to be a woman on the frontier, and about why some women were able to survive or even thrive, and why some women collapsed under the strain. Didn't the doctor realize when he was planning to come to the West that Emmaline was unsuited for pioneer life? I suppose we all fool ourselves that people will "get used to the situation." One of the things that I sort of wish had been developed a little more in the book was the backstory for Louisa's Momma. There are hints that she may have had a hard adjustment to make when they first came to Nebraska, but just what kind of struggles she may have had or how she overcame them is never part of the story. I think that might have strengthened the theme (what I thought was the theme, anyway).

I guess it comes down to something the guy on that Discovery Channel show Man vs. Wild said about surviving in one episode (can't quote it directly) -- it's all in a person's outlook. If you have a positive outlook and believe you are going to make it, that you have to make it, the odds are much better that you will make it. Emmaline never believed it, not for a minute, and that's the tragedy of her story.