10. “It can never be a long time ago.”

As we talked about in our very first episode, the last line of Big Woods reads, “Now is now, it can never be a long time ago.” That line might be the most accurate description there is of the Little House series. Little House on the Prairie might be about another time, but Laura’s stories are very much alive in our time. We can't seem to let her go. But of course, some of the ways in which Laura is relevant are painful to consider. The story she tells is narrow, contributing to a long held mythology of the American West that prioritizes white narratives. For a final look at Laura’s impact, Glynnis and Wilder producer Emily drive further west, beyond Laura’s homesteads, to understand what we’re missing when we hold on too tightly to one narrative. Could it be time to let Laura go?

Go deeper: 
More on Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills
More on the Gordon Stockade 
More on the Battle of the Little Bighorn
More on Buffalo Calf Road Woman
More on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This recording is being made in Laura Ingalls Wilder Library
of Mansfield, Missouri, the home of Missus Wilder.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
In nineteen fifty three, nineteen years after the first Little
House book was released, librarians in California sent Laura Ingalls
Wilder a present for her eighty sixth birthday, and especially
they were homemade dolls of every member of the Ingles family.
To thank the librarians, Laura recorded a response in the Mansfield,

(00:28):
Missouri Library.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
I certainly do appreciate the gift of these clanked little
figures that seemed to have walked out of my memory Chauvelona.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Though this is the only known recording of Laura's voice,
but more.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Than all, I value the understanding and love for me
and my family that prompted the gift.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in
the Little House on the Prairie series, was published ninety
years ago this year. As we talked about in our
very first episode, the last line of Big Woods reads.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Now is now it can never be a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
That line might be the most accurate description there is
of the Little House series. The books still saw millions
of copies, the television show still airs around the world.
Little House on the Prairie might be about another time,
but Laura's stories are very much alive in our time.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
We can't seem to let her go.

Speaker 5 (01:31):
Why is Laura still around?

Speaker 6 (01:33):
She's just really honestly going to sound like a ridiculous answer,
but like why is a cup of tea still around?

Speaker 4 (01:41):
It's she's so cozy.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
A century and a half after a girl was born
in a little log cabin in the big Woods of Wisconsin,
her stories continue to hold some timeless truths.

Speaker 7 (01:53):
There's a rich family in town at the store who
give them a hard time, and there's always a crop
failure or blizzard.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
Her loco and they cling together and make it through.

Speaker 7 (02:03):
I think it's that these are the problems that people
really deal with.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Laura is still relevant, although often in ways that can
be painful to consider.

Speaker 8 (02:14):
Many of the issues that Wilder raises in the Little
House Books are issues that are still with us today,
and in that sense, her work is more relevant than ever.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
We started this podcast in order to have an honest
look at the woman behind the books, and what we
discovered is that there is a lot more behind Laura
than the simple, heartwarming tale of a sixty five year
old farm wife deciding to sit down and write about
her life. There is mind blowing poverty, relentless hardship, a

(02:48):
father who made a lot of questionable decisions, an extremely complicated,
some might say, backstabbing daughter, an authorship conspiracy that won't
quite die, a Hollywood star with shiny hair, a perfect
jawline and glistening abs.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
A lot of violent racism, and.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
The funding of some extreme political figures, and an army
of fans that has fueled an entire international tourism industry.
But where does that leave us? And where does that
leave me? A person who has loved Laura so deeply
for so long. I went into this project not knowing

(03:33):
where our investigation would take us, and not knowing how
I would feel on the other side. And now we're here,
and what I feel is complicated, And I'm also shocked
at the things that ended up upsetting me the most
while making this show.

Speaker 9 (03:51):
What if doing this episode makes me never read Little
House again?

Speaker 2 (03:55):
What I do know is I don't love Laura Ingalls
wild or aney less, but I think about her and
myself very differently than I did a year ago. You
know what they say about truly loving something, sometimes you
have to let it go. I'm Glennis McNichol, and this

(04:17):
is the final episode of Wilder. We're going to start

(05:03):
by going right back to where this entire project began.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
On the road. Oh that's you can see the beginning
of the bad Lands right over there.

Speaker 10 (05:12):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Last summer, when we were driving around the Midwest visiting
the lower Ingles houses, we didn't end our trip at
de smet South Dakota. Unlike the Ingles family, Emily and
I kept moving west. There are two sides to the
state of South Dakota. The eastern side, where the Ingles lived,
is largely farmland, but once you cross the Missouri River,

(05:37):
things open up. You pass through a number of Native
American reservations, including the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
One of the largest in the United States, and Buffalo
Gap National Grassland.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
A little further is the Badlands National Park, and beyond
that the Black Hills.

Speaker 11 (05:59):
So that seems like the start of the real Western
landscape I've been imagining.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
The idea of the American West is at the heart
of the idea of America, and despite never moving beyond
the actual Midwest, Little House is.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
Very much a part of that narrative. Part of the
reason we.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Came out on the road was to try and walk
in Laura's shoes and see at least some of what
she saw.

Speaker 4 (06:28):
But we also came out.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Here to get a better sense of the role Laura
plays in our understanding of this history. As we drove
further west, it became more apparent to us how Laura
is connected to American myth making and the sometimes violent
prioritizing of the white experience.

Speaker 12 (06:49):
Well, I see it.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
If you drive into the heart of the Black Hills
and follow the many, many signs pointing the way, you
will eventually come upon Mount Rushmore's just hollen than I.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
That was entirely my first response to I thought, it
looks little to me.

Speaker 12 (07:07):
I expected to be blown away.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
By Mount Rushmore is an iconic American image carved into granite.
It's shorthand for the permanence of the American idea of democracy,
a tribute to its own greatness, a mascot for America,
if you will. It's also carved into an extremely sacred
place for Native Americans. And while we all know what
Mount Rushmore looks like, to encounter it in the midst

(07:31):
of the lush landscape of the Black Hills underscores both
its absurdity and the violation of Native American land by
the US government.

Speaker 7 (07:41):
There's no reason for that to be there.

Speaker 11 (07:46):
Other than, Hey, we're here now, so fuck you to
everyone who was here before.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
In eighteen sixty eight, with the signing of the Fort
Laramie Treaty, the US government agreed that the Black Hills
would remain exclusively Native land, but once gold was found
in the Hills a few years later, the US broke
the treaty and white settlers flooded the area. By the
nineteen twenties, the Black Hills was a tourist destination for many.

(08:17):
To further capitalize on this, the faces of four American
presidents were carved in the face of a granite formation
known to the Lakota people as six Grandfather's Mountain. When
the monument was finished, this cliff was renamed Mount Rushmore.
In nineteen eighty, the US Supreme Court ruled that the

(08:37):
US had unlawfully taken control of the Black Hills and
offered more than one hundred million dollars to the Sioux Nation,
but the Sioux refused the money. To this day, they
reject it and insist they want their land back.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
A little bit more.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
I mean, look at this side without the presidents, Like,
look at George Washington's profile up there.

Speaker 13 (09:04):
It's just here.

Speaker 14 (09:05):
You up, get out, George.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
It's so it's so sterile.

Speaker 11 (09:11):
Also because you cut through and it's white compared to
the red and everything. You could just tell, Wow, it's
kind of like a permanent billboard for America. It's like
you carved a billboard for America into the Hills.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
The Ingles family have a direct connection to the fate
of the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore was completed in nineteen
forty one. By this point, Laura's younger sister, Carrie was
married to a man named David N. Swansea, who was
known as the person who named Mount Rushmore, and Carrie's
step son Harold, helped carve it. But Laura's connections to

(09:52):
the Black Hills goes back even further than that, to
something called the Gordon Stockade. Yes, that's a stockade, right though,
Oh oh my god, your destination is all the right.
The Gordon Party was a private expedition that illegally ventured

(10:12):
into the Black Hills in eighteen seventy four, looking for gold.
The reason they did so is because a few months earlier,
Lieutenant Colonel George Custer had been sent there to scout
a good spot for a military post and reported back
that there was lots of gold. The Gordon Party set
out shortly thereafter, and once they reached their destination in

(10:34):
October eighteen seventy four, built a stockade and settled in.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
For the winter.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Hardcore Little House fans will recognize the Gordon stockade from
the book These Happy Golden Years. When Laura's uncle Tom
visits the Ingles family and desmet in the chapter titled Springtime,
Laura comes home and finds a vaguely familiar man at
the table. That man is Tom Kuiner, Ma's youngest brother,
who Laura hasn't seen since she was a child. Uncle

(11:01):
Tom tells the family of his experience as a member
of the Gordon Party, when he was one of the
quote first white men that ever laid eyes on the
Black Hills. After surviving the winter, the Gordon Party was
forcefully removed by the US cavalry for illegally settling on
Native land, and when Uncle Tom gets to this part
of the story, it gets a big reaction out of

(11:24):
paw Paw was walking back and forth across the room.
I'll be darned if I could have taken it, he exclaimed,
Not without some kind of scrap. We couldn't fight the
whole United States Army, Uncle Tom said sensibly. But I
did hate to see that stockade go up and smoke,
I know, Ma said, to this day, I think of

(11:46):
the house we had to leave in Indian Territory, just
when Charles got glass windows into it.

Speaker 4 (11:54):
As a kid.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
PA's anger in this scene is the only thing that
stood out to me in a chapter that I was
otherwise bored by. But as Ma points out, pause anger
mirrors the outrage the Ingles felt at being removed from
Indian Territory. The lesson in both these instances seems to
be that white people have a right to land simply
because they want it, and in the Black Hills, the

(12:19):
history of this prioritization of white men and the decimation
of Native people's land was impossible to miss.

Speaker 5 (12:27):
One west.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Three miles after leaving the Black Hills, Emily and I
continued on three hundred miles northwest to a spot that
represents one of the most extreme versions of this erasure,
The Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana.

Speaker 11 (12:45):
Little Bighorn Battlefield three miles.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
In June eighteen seventy six, the Seventh Cavalry, led by
Custer was famously defeated by the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Arapahoe
tribes led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. There are
a lot of complicated reasons that led to the Battle
of the Little Big Horn, including numerous treaties the government
made about control of the Black Hills that were not honored,

(13:15):
and we've included resources in the show notes for further
reading on this. Even though the Lakota, and Cheyenne and
arapa Hoe triumphed over Custer in the Battle of Greasy Grass,
as it is known in Native American culture, it was
in many ways the last stand of Native American independence
in the West.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
In the aftermath of.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
The battle, most of the remaining Native American tribes were
violently pushed onto reservations.

Speaker 4 (13:41):
Today, it's widely.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Recognized that Custer's decision to ignore orders and go into
battle was foolish and unnecessary. And yet, despite this failure,
which resulted in the decimation of the Seventh Cavalry, for
many decades Custer was still centered as the hero in
this story. Until nineteen ninety one, the location of the

(14:04):
battle was known as Custer Battlefield National Monument.

Speaker 9 (14:09):
It is wild, the Iron, Lost Cup, the pool, and
yet this is still named Custer does It's still glorified.

Speaker 12 (14:18):
There's no way to spin this.

Speaker 5 (14:21):
Like.

Speaker 7 (14:21):
It takes some amazing myth making to make this seem
heroic in anyway, Not even Rose Wilderland.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
I mean, this is like Rose level.

Speaker 7 (14:30):
Of yeah, rewriting history, the gas lighted Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
The Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument is located on
the Crow Reservation. Every hour at the visitor center, one
of the park rangers gives a talk. There is also
a bus tour of the site run by the Crow Agency.

Speaker 5 (14:49):
My name Story Chevis, you guys tour guide today.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
The bus tour takes you right out into the fields
where the battle took place and looking out over all
the waving open grassland. It's not that hard to imagine
yourself back in eighteen seventy six.

Speaker 10 (15:03):
After the right, we're passing the Little Big Porn River.
This is the only place in the whole world you'll
get to see a reenactment on the actual battle site.
They have that every year on the anniversary you just
basicedify Foople weekends. We'll also have seven Pobury reenactors who
will spend about two weeks, you know, living exactly the
way that those soldiers will have.

Speaker 13 (15:22):
Pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Afterward, Emily and I stopped at the visitors center hoping
to catch one of the park rangers talks. Since we'd arrived,
we'd only encountered older, white male rangers, But when we
got to the talk, we met Ranger Tanya Gardner, who
was not what we were expecting in more ways than one.

Speaker 13 (15:43):
The battles the Little.

Speaker 15 (15:44):
Big Horn, Why did this battle take place?

Speaker 16 (15:47):
What events set up to this battle?

Speaker 17 (15:51):
Or I'd like to begin where I'd love to begin
this in fourteen ninety two Colma South, the Ocean Blue
here what this is up until eighteen sis.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
It was immediately clear that Ranger Tanya wasn't just going
to tell us about this battle. She was going to
tell us how this battle was just one episode in
the century's long resistance of Native Americans against colonization.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
It's the nineteen hundreds.

Speaker 18 (16:18):
There are legal documents being signed out here land deals
in the form of what we're called treaties between the
people who are here, and the United States government.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
When we got back to New York, we couldn't stop
thinking about Ranger Tanya's talk, so we called her.

Speaker 18 (16:36):
I'm Tanya. My maiden name is plain Feather, and I'm
my married name is Gardner, and I'm married.

Speaker 13 (16:41):
To a Cheyenne.

Speaker 18 (16:42):
I'm I'm from Lodgegras, Montana.

Speaker 4 (16:45):
Are you the only park ranger who is local or
who is Native American?

Speaker 13 (16:49):
There?

Speaker 18 (16:50):
There's a few that work there, but not like the
seasonal rangers there. I'm the only one, and there's been
like I don't know how many countless seasons where I've
been only female.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
It had felt to both Emily and I when we
were at the site that Tanya was shouldering the enormous
responsibility of giving context to an event that had been
simplified to almost cartoonish proportions in American history, a history that,
like pause outrage over being removed from quote Indian territory,
centered the white experience as the only one of value.

(17:24):
What had struck us most strongly about Tanya was that
she'd immediately gone to the origins of the myth making
behind both Custer and America.

Speaker 18 (17:34):
The event that led up to this battle I always
start with, didn't start in eighteen seventy six. We're going
to go all the way back to fourteen ninety two
Columbus South the Ocean blue, and he discovers America and
all the misconceptions that we have there with just that
statement and not knowing and not having that right information

(17:58):
in our history books. Where the way that they hold
him up to this high you know, he did all
these great things and he really didn't. That's where the
seed of that stuff.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
I was curious whether Tanya received any sort of pushback
when she did her talks. She told us the response
very much shifts depending on the age of the visitors,
and that younger age groups that have had access to
more diverse cultural narratives have a much different take.

Speaker 18 (18:26):
It goes with different age groups, and I think that
people that are my age, they come up and they're like, oh, this, yes,
this was crap. You know this, I can't believe. You
can't really tell you know what you really want to tell.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
Older generations, on the other hand, feel a much closer
connection to Custer.

Speaker 18 (18:44):
You have a lot of baby boomers, and they're kind
of like the last kind of old school I would
call them that there's still in love with Custer. There's
a tremendous amount of people out there that are custom Bucks.
They think he was right and he was honorable. But
we have to think back to that time when they
didn't have all these different types of heroes, so you know,

(19:05):
they looked to the types of things like.

Speaker 13 (19:08):
A war hero.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
This idea of needing a hero is where Custer overlapped
directly with Laura. For me, Tanya's observations reminded me of
something doctor w Reese had said when we talked to her.

Speaker 5 (19:21):
Part of what I was realizing when I left our
reservation and went to graduate school was how ignorant people
are about who Native people are.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Doctor de Wie Reese is a scholar and educator who
runs a website called American Indians in Children's Literature.

Speaker 5 (19:40):
And that became very clear at the University of Illinois
because it had a mascot that was quote unquote an Indian.
And when I got to Illinois and there was this mascot,
and people would invite me to come to their civic
organization or whatever it was, and they wanted me to dance,
and they wanted me to story and I said, well,
I'm not a dancer. I don't dance that way. We

(20:04):
dance in a spiritual way at a certain time of
the year in a certain place, and so no, I
won't dance. And they said, well can you? Can you
tell stories? And I said no, I'm not a storyteller either.
I am a professor. I want to be a professor.
Nobody wanted that. They wanted someone to perform Indians for them,
and I thought, what is going on? These are in theory,

(20:25):
very very smart people in this area.

Speaker 13 (20:27):
But it was.

Speaker 5 (20:28):
It was so it spoke to the power of the mascot.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
A mascot and how do we wield mascots?

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Anyone who's been to a sports game knows is with
bluntness and little space for anyone else. The Dictionary definition
of a mascot is quote a person, animal, or object
that is believed to bring good luck, or one that
represents an organization. A mascot is an image we rally
behind that represents a way of being and one that

(21:01):
gives us identity.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
This idea of mascots was very.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Much on our mind when Emily and I went to
the Laura Ingalls House in Mansfield, Missouri, last September to
attend Wilder Days. We're much like the pageants people loved
dressing up as Laura.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
Plenty of girls in prairie outfits, but there's a handful
of men, I would say, in.

Speaker 19 (21:24):
Their fifties and sixties, wearing some guys wearing suspenders.

Speaker 17 (21:28):
In Yah.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Of all the ways I'd considered Laura, it was only
after this conversation with Doctor Reese and our trips out
west and down South, but I began to think of
her as a mascot for many things, as a representative
of some sort of ideal. A girl with enormous agency,
frontier woman who lived with and against nature, a woman

(21:53):
who had it ventures and wrote them down. She was
an image I hoisted up as proof of identity, an
evidence of what was possible. I didn't put her on
a T shirt or a baseball cap, but I stabled
a whole lot of yarn braids to my hats. Laura
as the mascot for the team I wanted to be
on felt a lot closer to my own experience. But

(22:17):
to understand who I was willing to leave behind in
order to be a member of this team. What this
mascot of Laura's pioneer girlhood erased was something I had
to come to terms with.

Speaker 7 (22:44):
I grew up completely obsessed with the Little House Books.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
It all starts with Laura Ingalls right, my.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Little House Books for Christmas gifts, inscribed to me by
my mother.

Speaker 13 (22:54):
I was six years old, and I loved those books.
I still do.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Considering Laura under the guys of a mascot felt like
the missing piece and the larger Little House puzzle. Mascots
are created by organizations. Many hands go into their making.

Speaker 4 (23:11):
Part of the magic of the Little House Books, and
one of.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
The reasons people including me, have such passionate feelings about
them is because they are so successful at creating intimacy.
We're not reading about Laura, We're living with Laura, and
yet we know this is not the case.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
The Little House Books.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
And their entire legacy were very carefully crafted by Laura,
indefinitely by Rose, then to a lesser extent, by the
book publishing industry. Then they were crafted again by Hollywood.
Laura the writer may have just wanted to recounter life,
but Laura Ingles, the character, very intentionally represents something larger.

(23:55):
This raises an important question if Laura is a mascot
for a team? What are the other teams and who
was representing them? What stories about girls and women in
this part of the country are we not telling. A
few years ago I stumbled across a story about the
Battle of the Little Big Horn. Included was in aside

(24:17):
that the Cheyenne believed a Cheyenne woman named Buffalo calf
Road Woman may have been the person who caused Custer's death.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
This astounded me.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Why was this not a more well known fact, especially
considering the cultural footprint of Custer. I asked Tanya if
she knew about Buffalo calf Road Woman. It turns out
Buffalo calf Road Woman is quite famous in Cheyenne history.

Speaker 18 (24:43):
She's also known for being part of the Battle of
the Rosebud or she picks up her brother because the
Chaya's called that the battle or the saved her brother.
That's what they refer to the Battle of the Rosebuda, the.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Battle of the Rosebud, or the battle where the girls
saved her brothers, the Cheyenne referred it took place a
week before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, during
the battle when all hope seemed to be lost for
the Cheyenne, Buffalo Calffrod Woman went out onto the battlefield
by herself to save her fallen brother. This action rallied

(25:16):
the Native American forces and they defeated the US cavalry
led by George Crook. This is why the Cheyenne named
the battle after her.

Speaker 18 (25:26):
That's where I shine the light on her is in
the Battle of the Rosebud, because they actually named it
after her.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Whether or not it was Buffalo calff Road Woman who
was responsible for Custer's death, maybe secondary to why we
don't know who killed him. The Cheyenne passed down their
history orally, not in written form, but after the Battle
of the Little Big Horn, many participants went silent for
fear of retribution. It was only after a century of

(25:54):
self impost silence that the Cheyenne revealed Buffalo caff Road
Woman's role in the battle.

Speaker 18 (26:01):
After the battle, the United States time is going to
spread noxense, going after anyone that's not on the reservation.
And then if they are on the reservation, they're still
going to come after you. And anybody associated with Custer
Battle that you know, that's what it's called back then,
would be horribly persecuted. So they didn't talk about it.

Speaker 5 (26:22):
Nobody did.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
The story of Buffalo Caffrod woman has all the heroic
elements of an epic American tale, far more than Custer,
and yet she remains nearly anonymous in mainstream culture. Women
not getting a fair shake from history is hardly new.
One of the reasons so many of us, and I
include myself here in the strongest terms, cling to Laura

(26:50):
is that she is a strong female role model, and
for most of history there have been very few of those.
The devotion so many of us feel towards Laura is
not surprising, but it becomes a concern when this sort
of devotion takes up so much space that it doesn't
leave room for other narratives.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
I mean, Emily, what is your take on how empty
it is?

Speaker 12 (27:25):
It's very empty.

Speaker 7 (27:26):
We on the Wyoming side we were seeing like ruins
of ranches or active ranches, and now there's absolutely nothing.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
This stretch of the country is notorious for modern day reasons,
having nothing to do with Custer or the so called
Old West.

Speaker 15 (27:44):
In late twenty nineteen, the Crow tribe declared a state
of emergency. Tribal chairman aj not Afraid cited a list
of issues, including the failure to address the murdered and
missing women crisis.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
In a story published earlier this year tied to a
docuseries called Murder and Bighorn about the epidemic, the Guardian
reported quote, Montana has one of the worst missing or
murdered rates for Indigenous women in the country. Driving back
and forth on this road, I thought a lot about
who is deemed worthy of a story, and this led

(28:19):
me to consider even more how the story of Laura
is wielded. What does Laura's appeal say about what we
want to believe and who are we willing to leave
out for that comfort Because to many people, Laura is
very comforting.

Speaker 6 (28:35):
She fulfills these basic traits that we need, oh, you know,
putting a baby to sleep, or reading somebody a book,
or just you know, even though nothing about the books
that actually happens, it is comforting.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
That's Lizzie Skernick, writer and children's literature professor at NYU.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
There's nothing comforting about like living in a mud hut.

Speaker 6 (28:59):
She's able to make everything comforting and cozy.

Speaker 5 (29:05):
And I think that is a fundamental desire of human beings.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
I have read the Little House Books hundreds of times
when I was a kid, the worst parts of the
books only flagged to me as evidence that Ma was
invested in Laura not enjoying herself, similar to how I
sometimes felt about my own mother, and that Paw was exciting,
which was similar to how I felt about my own

(29:33):
father as a child. As a grown up, I recognize
the racism in the books, and I also recognize that
so many cultural things we loved growing up are very problematic.
This is something that came up on our road trip
a lot. On our second night in man Cato, after

(29:57):
a long day of interviews, we just I had to
order room service and camped out in front of the TV.

Speaker 4 (30:05):
Much to our delight, a childhood favorite of Joe.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
And Minds was showing sixteen Candles, a sleepover staple that
neither of us had actually seen in years. It does
not hold up, to put it mildly, but Joe especially
had a strong reaction.

Speaker 16 (30:23):
I mean, I'm like almost ready to start a petition
to make sixteen channels not being put out.

Speaker 7 (30:27):
Of the times.

Speaker 14 (30:28):
Wow, we need to put the mic out. Okay, what
a one eighty Joe. I was so horrified by that movie.
I do not want and I can actually see different
themes in my own life, and I was like, oh,
all right, you know whatever, you get black out drunk,
and like, who knows what happens. I don't think that

(30:50):
movie should be on television anymore.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
There is no getting around the fact that looking at
some of the things that made us who we are
can be painful. Even with all this knowledge, it remains
impossible for me not to understand Laura as a source
of good in my own life. What she gave me
in terms of possibility, an example of how to be complicated,
a girl who loves it venture and clothes, who loves problematics,

(31:18):
sometimes damaging parents, and maybe most importantly, how to be
a writer. I was able to love these things because
the damaging parts of the book didn't feel like they
were doing damage to me, and even if they were,
how much I loved the rest of it made up
for that. And then, during the recording of the Problem

(31:42):
of Laura episode, I read out loud the parts of
the books that Little House comes under fire for the most.
As I said the words out loud, I was shocked
to discover that I actually felt physically ill. She says
to Pa quote Paw, get me that Little Indian Baby.

(32:02):
I want it, I want it, she begged.

Speaker 13 (32:06):
Oh what if doing this.

Speaker 9 (32:09):
Episode makes me never read Little House again? My reading
this out loud has actually been way more upsetting to
me than the reread. And it was not easy for
the producers in the room either.

Speaker 4 (32:24):
Pah, when I look at you, guy, when you're like
this stressful to listen to this.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
There is, after all, a difference between reading and saying,
between sliding over the parts with your eyes that are
a problem and putting them out in the world with
your own voice. And the saying out loud part was
where it turns out the buck stopped for me.

Speaker 4 (32:47):
My god, this episode is really upsetting. It's so much
different to say it out loud. Maybe that's the thing.
Everyone should have to read these books out loud. I
considered it.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
I realized I'd only read the books to myself all
these years that I had been able to internalize Laura
without much mediation. I immediately thought back to doctor Reese
and her belief that The Little Housebook should be taken
out of children's classrooms.

Speaker 5 (33:17):
Part of what was shocking to me as I tried
to have conversations with people about the books is that
I had asked them to consider that sentence the only
good Indian is a dead Indian, and I'd asked them
to think about the impact that line has on that
Native child in the classroom, And I asked them, would

(33:40):
you really do that? You know, would you really do that?
And they say yes, I mean, without hesitation, it was yes,
because that's the way it was. That's the way they
thought back then, and had all kinds of rationalizations for that,
and none of the rationalizations centered on the experience of
that Native child. And that was really hard because part

(34:02):
of what I think that we as a society think
is that we send our kids to teachers in schools.
I mean, we're giving them our children, and we trust
in some way that they are not going to be
hurt by their teachers and what happens in their clussures.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
What I was left with was this question, is the
fact the Little House Books brought me glynnis a lot
of joy enough to justify the violence they had the
power to inflict on others. After the break, we're going
to talk through how and where we think the Little
House Books belong and also hear from listeners on whether

(34:43):
they too are thinking about Laura and Little House. Differently,
what would you say to me that I struggled to
let go of my love for these books even as
I recognize the harm that they do.

Speaker 5 (34:59):
I would tell you, and this is something that I
actually do in my workshops, is that I share my
own attachment to the Five Chinese Brothers. You know, I
can like smell that book when I say the title,
because it's one that I read, and what you know,
in first grade I learned to read this is one
of the books I read. I thought it was awesome.
But then when someone asked me to reconsider the book

(35:19):
and the images that they were in there, I'm like, yeah,
you're right, and I own that and I admit that,
And so I talk about that and how it kind
of stings, It kind of hurts, and you feel kind
of stupid because, yeah, why didn't I see that before?
But it does take a conversation to be able to
see something and start the journey of letting go of

(35:40):
a particular book.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
I decided the best people to have this conversation with
were Joe and Emily, the two women who had come
out on the road with me more than a year
ago to try and figure out how I felt about Laura. So,
guys were at the end of the Wilder podcast, which

(36:02):
we started eighteen months ago.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
We have read all the.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Books, We've talked to, all of the people, we have
driven around the country, We've done hundreds of hours of interviews,
and so I thought this would be a really good
time for us all to sort of sit down in
separate locations and sort of talk through what we've learned

(36:28):
and if our thinking has changed.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
How does everyone feel?

Speaker 16 (36:33):
Well, Glynn, I think you're the first person that should
answer that, because when we started this whole wild journey,
you weren't sure exactly what you were going to find
and whether after you've found whatever it was, you would
still be able to love Laura in the same way.

(36:55):
And after all of this, after this journey of epic proportions,
literally literally, how do you feel now?

Speaker 2 (37:05):
I still I have such deep love for Laura the person,
like the individual writer who sat down and wrote it.
But I think coming to terms with the fact that
these books are not just a story that came directly
out of her head as she was experiencing it, and
really understanding that these books were a production of more

(37:30):
than a few people, some of them very unlikable, and
Laura has very unlikable parts of her, and so I
really sort of split my thinking between the person and
the product.

Speaker 16 (37:43):
I really like what you just said about splitting your feelings,
and I think that's a very modern way of looking
at creative production at a brand. And that's what I
think about a lot when I think about celebrities or
when I think about influencers, And all right, can I

(38:04):
enjoy this movie that has been made by a director
who is terrible in real life? Can I enjoy Michael
Jackson with my kids, knowing what I know about him
as a human? And so I think that this is
a bigger thing that so many of us scrapple with

(38:24):
with art.

Speaker 13 (38:25):
Can we enjoy art.

Speaker 16 (38:27):
If we discover things we don't like about the human
being behind it, because all human beings are flawed in
different ways.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, And the interesting thing in this case is I'm
struggling less with Laura the individual. I recognize that she
was complicated and had a lot of problems, but that's
less difficult for me to accept because that just feels
like every human than her art, which I am struggling with.
And part of what's so complicated about that that we've

(38:57):
talked about is her art is so much about her.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
That speaks to.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Something that has come up from a lot of listeners
too when we criticize Laura, which is she was a
person of her moment. She was writing what she knew
at the time, and when I think about the individual,
I can recognize there's some truth to that, although lots
of people in the nineteenth century knew that Indian removal

(39:22):
was bad, and we have to hold her to today's
standards because she exists as a relevant thing in twenty
twenty three. So I keep thinking of it like you're
allowed to look at an antique car and say, well,
it was built in nineteen twenty three, but it doesn't
mean it doesn't have to pass inspection to be allowed
on the road. And I feel like what we've been
doing with Laura is holding her up to twenty twenty

(39:44):
three inspection to say should you still be on the road.

Speaker 4 (39:49):
Essentially, you know, do you pass this inspection? And if
you don't, what do we do about that.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
I am so aware of all the good she brought
to my life, but my life as a little white
girl in suburban Toronto with highly educated parents and a
wealth of resources is not everyone's life. I might love
my nineteen twenty three car, but is it dangerous to

(40:15):
be on the road like it's it's yeah.

Speaker 13 (40:17):
I don't think you shouldn't drive.

Speaker 4 (40:19):
That car right right?

Speaker 2 (40:21):
It has to be updated. And I also think, like
the flip side of that is, I can't unlove something
that had a positive effect on me to the degree
she did. I can only recognize that I loved her
so much. I was willing to gloss over and not
be bothered by all the problems. But I still you know,

(40:44):
even reading parts of the book. I mean, parts of
them are really upsetting, as we heard, but it's just
like there is a magic to them. I get why
I love them. I still love them.

Speaker 13 (40:54):
I think you're allowed to still love them.

Speaker 16 (40:55):
I think you're allowed to still love them and to
also think critically about them and to talk critically about them.

Speaker 4 (41:04):
How do you guys feel, Joe, you came to this
with very little knowledge, so you have the coldest eye
on this of the three of us.

Speaker 16 (41:09):
You know, what I really enjoyed during this journey was
experiencing the magic. It was actually really fun to experience
the magic through your eyes, but as an outsider, I
think the problems were always just so so clear to
me with the TV show with the books. But all

(41:31):
of that said, I don't think that they shouldn't be
read anymore. I don't think they should be banned. I
don't think they should be taken off library shelves. I
do think that they should be approached with critical discussion
and a critical eye. But I also think there's a
lot of good in there that it would be a

(41:53):
real shame to remove.

Speaker 13 (41:55):
From the world.

Speaker 4 (41:57):
Emily, what do you think You knew the show, You
were familiar with the books, but you love the show,
so yeah, yeah, I was a show lover.

Speaker 7 (42:05):
But I've really done the crash course in all aspects
of Laura. In the past year. I reread all of
the books. We took the two week long and then
extra weekend road trip to all the sites, and to
keep going with your car passing inspection metaphor, I think
you have to make sure that everything is up to
your standards. But then it's so important to go out

(42:28):
there and get on the road because if we had
made this all just in a vacuum in the studio,
like it would be a completely different show. I think
like half the insights we got to we wouldn't have
even thought of because seeing how Laura landed in every
specific place, from like seeing her embraced at Laura's sites
like Walnack Grove and De Smet, but then going out

(42:50):
to Custer and being in the middle of Native reservations
and understanding how this lands differently with different audiences. Putting
yourself in the shoes of people who are not white
and who have been harmed by this narrative definitely has
made me come to the conclusion that I don't think
these should be taught in anything besides a higher level

(43:11):
literature class or history class. I don't think they should
be taught to young kids in classrooms. I think they
can still be read. I really hope that one day
there will be additions for children to understand all of
the context, so that that's what parents can read to
their children. But so, yeah, I don't think they should
be banned, but I do think we should filter how

(43:33):
they're understood.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, I think for me, the more painful conclusion I've
come to. I've given this book set to every friend
that's had a child. It was my go to you know,
baby gift for a long time, and I wouldn't do
that anymore. It's too violent. In in perfect world, how

(43:56):
I'd like to see these books package because I don't
think they should be taken off shelves. I think we're
we're seeing books being taken off shelves and I can't
support that at all.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
But I think the books need to be packaged.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
I think a lot of the Disney movies now, which
come when you start watching an old Disney movie, they
come with this It's almost like a content warning of like,
what you're about to watch is really problematic, and we
recognize that. I think the books themselves need to be
packaged with enormous context of who were the Native Americans

(44:30):
that Laura watched leave quote unquote Indian Territory and what
is their story? And it needs to be in the
books in a way that makes it just as engaging
as what you're reading. So I think it should be
included in every one of these box sets. But I
also think the largest solution to this is that, and
this is already happening. We know from talking to Lizzie's

(44:51):
college classes, the spotlight needs to be moved away from Laura, right,
like Laura shouldn't occupy this much space in children's classrooms
or in children's literature.

Speaker 4 (45:02):
There needs to be so much more space for the
other stories.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
And I think you know, Shena, one of our other
producers asked me earlier if I had the choice of
giving up Laura and substituting her with someone who is
less of a problem. And I think it brings me
joy right now to know that I can give other
books to kids with better representation, like I can let go.
That's what I think I meant at the beginning of
this when I say, you know, when you love something,
you have to let it go.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
I can still love her.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Eight year old Glynnis loves her, but I can find
other things to give to other kids, and hopefully they
experience that degree of joy with stories that are less.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
Violent and less capable of harm.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
I guess I want kids to feel the degree of
joy and passion I felt, but about better in different stories,
and so then that becomes, you know, The challenge I think,
certainly for those of us devoted enough to Little House,
is to invest in finding what those others stories are
and providing those stories. I don't have to be giving

(46:04):
Little House out to anyone. I can just have my
Little House memory and don't need to pass it on,
I guess is my end result of this, which sort
of makes me a little sad, But it makes me
not sad too, because I think, oh, there's other stuff there.
There's other stuff out there, and there's other joys for
kids to have that I just want them to have

(46:25):
the joy.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
It doesn't have to be about the same story I had.

Speaker 7 (46:29):
Yeah, And I think one of the things that really
did change my mind about Little House, and I think
this is true for a lot of our listeners too,
is when we started to talk about Rose and all
of the ways that she was involved in writing and
editing the books. And there was one really key fact
about our favorite line now is now it can never
be a long time ago, which closes the end of

(46:51):
the first book, and it's that a lot of scholars,
like Caroline Fraser particularly, think that Rose might have written
that line.

Speaker 4 (47:01):
What do you think about that? I mean, as a kid,
Rose would have devastated me. As a grown up, I
just recognized all the things Joe and I talked about
about having a great editor and complicated relationships.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
So knowing Rose came up with that line. At this point,
I just think I have mainlined Rose in a way
that I this is. You know, when I talk about
inhaling these books, I thought I was mainlining Laura.

Speaker 4 (47:25):
I was mainlining white a lot of Rose.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
And of course Rose is responsible for the line that
sums up the entire book.

Speaker 4 (47:33):
She enabled Laura to be a genius, and that is.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Extraordinary, and it might be that she articulated a truth
about Laura better than Laura did. So it kind of,
to be quite honest with you, it feels sort of
perfect that a woman who refused to be associated as
a writer of the book, who tried to undermine her
mother at every turn, is also responsible for the truest

(48:00):
line in the entire series.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
So it's like, that's a perfect distillation of this entire series.

Speaker 7 (48:06):
To be it is the perfect essence of I like
what you said, that was already in Laura's work, and
then Rose just was able to package the essence of it.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
There's no Laura, there's Rose and Laura.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
So in my DNA, when I talk about Laura's in
my DNA, like Rose is in there too.

Speaker 7 (48:26):
Great Should we move on to listener comments.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Yes, it's been so interesting to read all the comments
and reviews from people, and it feels like they fall
into one of two camps of criticism, which is either
I still love Laura too much or we're being far
too critical of Laura. But I'm really interested to know,
you know, everyone who sent in their voice memos, and
we're so grateful for everyone who did, whether they have

(48:51):
been experiencing a similar struggle to what I've been going
through over the last year, and whether there's an overlap
in their respect this with mine.

Speaker 17 (49:04):
Hi.

Speaker 13 (49:05):
My name is Karen.

Speaker 20 (49:08):
I am a black female who grew up in the
seventies and loved the Little House books, reading Little Town
on the Prairie and The Menstrual Show. When I was
a child, I always felt uncomfortable, but back then I

(49:29):
didn't have language for what was happening to me. But
reading Prairie Fires and listening to this podcast, I just
see the racism within those books and am very torn
about how I feel about them now High Wilder Podcast.

Speaker 4 (49:50):
My name is Maddie.

Speaker 21 (49:51):
I was raised in a very fundamentalist homeschooling community, religious
homeschooling community, and it's interesting as y'all were talking about
kind of these like libertarian ideals going over your head
as a child.

Speaker 13 (50:05):
While I was reading them as a child, the.

Speaker 21 (50:07):
Adults in my life who were encouraging me to read
these were drawing them my attention to them and using
it as an education like they are being forced out
of Indian territory because big government is bad, that kind
of thing.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
You know.

Speaker 13 (50:20):
I still have family in these communities.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
I am not a part of it anymore.

Speaker 21 (50:25):
But I talked to my nieces who are being homeschooled
in that community, and you know, talk to them a
little bit about their experience with the book, and they
said that it's still going on, that's still kind of
the message being attached with the books. I think that
it just adds a layer of complication on how we
should be approaching these books with children. I don't know

(50:48):
if I'll read them to mine, honestly, because I don't
know if I would want that propaganda shared with them
if they're not old enough to comprehend it.

Speaker 22 (50:57):
My name is Caitlin. I was born into a family
that or the Little House series. Most of my ancestors
lived in eastern South Dakota at the same time she did.
People today talk about how important representation is to kids,
and I agree. I think that's why I adored Laura
so much. There aren't many famous people who come out

(51:17):
of South Dakota, but she was. She made me proud
of who I was and where I lived. She was me,
and if she could do great things, so could I.
Modern South Dakota can be like the one Laura lived in,
but can also be much different. A lot of your
podcast has discussed the return to the prairie esthetic, but
the prairies are emptying because of rural flight. There is

(51:40):
some sense of community, but it's mostly reserved for those
with the right last name. Outsiders are not very welcome.
So my opinion on Laura has changed with the times
and especially with this podcast. But I still want to
read these books to my kids someday because our ancestors
lived like Laura, and I feel it's important to teach

(52:01):
my future children about their past. But I feel that
I now have a more educated and mature view of
the books and now how to use it as an
educational tool rather than a propaganda tool.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Hello, my son is getting married soon and his bride
is Indigenous, and I imagined reading these things to my
future grandchildren who would be indigenous, and it was pretty
horrifying to see how it might be seen through their eyes.
Whereas before, when somebody would bring it up, I would think, well,

(52:37):
you can't apply modern sensibilities to the past.

Speaker 13 (52:41):
People lived in their times.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
There are things that our grandchildren will be horrified by
that we do every day without thought. But I don't
think it's appropriate for children anymore, and that sads me immensely.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
I'm someone who loves the Little House Books and I've
written about them. I've thought of myself as pretty clear
eyed about these issues in the books, and I figured
I'd just done all that reconciliation work. So I have
to say I really was not prepared for episode seven

(53:16):
to hit me the way it did, you know, with
the college class and just hearing how the Little Housebooks
how they look to younger generations.

Speaker 13 (53:26):
That was a little rough. But also I get it.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
I think a lot of people who hold onto the
books a certain way really try everything to avoid those feelings.
And I get that too, But I'm thinking now that
the more you let yourself just have those feelings, the
more you realize how little it really costs you to
acknowledge the other perspectives you know and just give them

(53:50):
spacing your head. Okay, So, I guess here's a metaphor.
I actually made a pigs bladder balloon, and anyone who
who has done that knows how horrifying it is in
real life. I mean like it looks like something like
a serial killer would play with. But you can still

(54:11):
hold that idea you had when you were a kid
of you know, this pig ladder being just a fun
balloon that is inside a pig, like a cracker Jack prize,
and you can let that exist alongside the reality that
it looks disgusting.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
What's so interesting about all this listener feedback is that
we all seem to be struggling with similar things, and
it's you know, further evidence that it's hard to interrogate
the things you loved as a kid because it's so
it runs so deep and it can be painful. So
many of us are in the same place of wanting

(54:48):
to do so and struggling to do so, and you know,
coming up with similar answers. Once again, Little House is
the zeitgeist of of reckoning with childhood love.

Speaker 13 (55:03):
Once again. It's complicated.

Speaker 7 (55:05):
Okay, well, Glennis, maybe one of the final questions I
have for you is how do you think about yourself differently?
Or what did you learn about yourself making this entire show.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
I mean, really understanding the degree to which I allowed
things to be acceptable simply because I was so.

Speaker 4 (55:29):
Relieved to see a.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Version of how I was in the world in a
character is upsetting and really makes you consider. I don't
know if selfishness is the right word, but all the
things we let pass by because of our own enjoyment
and enjoy and then subsequently flipping that and trying to
understand not just the pain of not seeing a version

(55:52):
of yourself in the world, but the pain of seeing
a terrible version of yourself in the world, which is
what happens in these books to not people and in
so much of the narratives we have, and thinking about,
you know, just what I was willing to tolerate for
my own pleasure into some degree survival.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
Is something I continue to think about. But I also
think about this.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
I lived in the Little House Books for most of
my childhood, and then the second I could, I stepped
through the map on my parents' family room floor.

Speaker 18 (56:32):
You can see Lake.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Preston, and then right to the left of that is
to Smith and attempted to recreate what I had learned
from Laura. I wrote, I traveled, I had and continue
to have adventures, and I have a deep belief in
the value of even the smallest parts of these stories.
I took to heart some of the messages I found

(56:55):
in Little House about honesty, bravery, adventure, and then we
applied it to the person who gave it to me
in the first place. And you've been listening to us
do that. Thank you for coming along for the ride.
Laura was a complicated, resilient, fascinating person, and it's been

(57:15):
strangely wonderful to discover and accept that she is a problem.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
You want to hold on to her. You have to
hold onto that too, and then keep going.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
There are other stories, and there are other nails, and
it might be time for this to be a very
long time ago.

Speaker 22 (57:43):
Let's just maybe think of it.

Speaker 13 (57:44):
Okay, I don't actually know where her grave is, but
how big is this grape song? It's just that for
the ones that look flowered, maybe, yeah.

Speaker 12 (57:54):
Wilder graves that way. It says it over there, oh here?

Speaker 19 (58:01):
Sure, though, I still go through the graveyard behind my
house and try and find people who were born in.

Speaker 4 (58:05):
Eighteen sixty seven, because they were born and the same.

Speaker 23 (58:07):
Year Laura was yeah, yeah, Wilder, it's just a big stone,
that says Wilder.

Speaker 12 (58:20):
Oh, here we go, they have more. Okay, that was
the backside. Apparently ninety is a solid a yeah for
what Laura ingles and.

Speaker 13 (58:33):
I mean months was ninety two.

Speaker 10 (58:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (58:37):
It's like everything in.

Speaker 23 (58:41):
Those books they could they were so close to death
so many times, but she made it.

Speaker 12 (58:48):
She made it right here.

Speaker 19 (58:50):
I have to say I have no emotional connection to
people's graves, and because I grew up behind your graveyard
your people are buried does not have resonance for me
where they lived.

Speaker 4 (59:01):
Like, yeah, going to dismess.

Speaker 13 (59:04):
Is so much more emotional.

Speaker 4 (59:07):
Or listening to pause fiddle and visiting a grave.

Speaker 8 (59:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 12 (59:11):
Isn't that kind of crazy that we're standing on top
of her them.

Speaker 19 (59:14):
We're not sitting on top We're standing on top of
her remains.

Speaker 4 (59:17):
This whole entire podcast is.

Speaker 13 (59:23):
Standing on top of her right.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Wilder is written and hosted by me Glennis McNichol. Our
story editors are Emily Meronoff and Joe Piazza. Our senior
producer is Emily Meronoff. Our producers are Mary Do, She
Knows Zaki and Jessica Crinchich. Our associate producer is Lauren Phillip.
Production help from Asavarey Sharma, sound design and mixing by

(59:52):
Amanda Rose Smith. Our amazing theme song and additional music
was composed by Alice McCoy. We are executive produced by
Joe Piazza, Nikki Aetore, Ali Perry and Me. Final special
thanks to Ranger Tanya Gardner, Heatherley McFarlane and Pauline Facon

(01:00:13):
from Bonzen Studio in Paris, Laura Ingles Wilder Home Association
for the recording of Laura's voice Upsalquate tours at the
Little Big Horn Battlefilip National Monument, Doctor DeBie Reese and
Professor Lizzie Skernick, and every one of you who sent
in your thoughts and feedback. As always, please see our

(01:00:37):
show notes for further reading and links for the subjects
we discussed in this episode.

Speaker 4 (01:00:43):
That's it for Wilder. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
We're going to keep posting on Instagram and TikTok, so
keep an eye out. There may be more bonus content
and news.

Speaker 13 (01:01:01):
Spre