76 pages • 2 hours read
Little House on the Prairie
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-4
Chapter 1 Summary: “Going West”
At the end of one winter during the late 1860s, Pa decides that Wisconsin, where the Ingalls family lives, is getting too crowded for him and to move his family to Kansas, which is less settled. He has heard that the US government will soon be displacing Native Americans from their territory in Kansas and opening up the land to white settlers, and he’s determined to get an early claim on good farming land.
The family sells their house and makes the trip in a covered wagon, leaving early one morning and crossing the frozen Mississippi River at the town of Pepin, on the Wisconsin-Minnesota border. Once on the Minnesota side, the family spends the first night at a deserted cabin used by travelers. In the night, Laura hears the ice on the river breaking up, meaning that the family crossed it just in time.
From Minnesota, the family goes south through Iowa and Missouri, then turn west to reach the plains of Kansas. They must cross many streams and rivers as they travel, some of which are flooded from the winter’s snowmelt. They wait until the water drops down and buy new horses to pull their wagon while they wait. The horses are strong mustangs (native wild horses that have been domesticated), that Laura and Mary name Pet and Patty.
As they travel, the landscape changes from forest to open prairie, which Laura finds disorienting: “In a perfect circle the sky curved down to the level land, and the wagon was in the circle’s exact middle. All day long Pet and Patty […] couldn’t get out of the middle of that circle” (13). She and Mary are bored by the unchanging landscape and lethargic from the tedious trip in the wagon. Finally, Pa sees trees on the horizon ahead, which are likely to indicate water, and he decides that the family will camp in the creek bottom for the night.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Crossing the Creek”
The family reaches the creek, which is in a wide canyon below the rest of the prairie. Pa decides to ford the creek, which unexpectedly gets deeper midway through, forcing him to get out of the wagon and swim alongside the horses to guide them. Mary and Laura are frightened, but Laura stands up in the wagon to look out and watch. Ma holds the reins of the wagon while Pa gets the team to the far bank. The family is relieved to be safe after the difficult crossing, but then realizes that their dog Jack—who they thought could swim alongside the wagon—is missing. Laura is upset and worried about Jack. Pa too, is regretful that they have seemingly lost such a good dog and says that he would have put Jack in the wagon if he’d known the water would get so deep. Later, Laura asks her parents if Jack will go to heaven, and Pa says that he will.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Camp on the High Prairie”
That evening, the family camps on the high prairie a short way from the creek, and the chapter describes the camp-making process. Pa puts the horses on picket lines—stakes driven into the ground with ropes attached to them that let the horses graze while keeping them in a fixed area. He starts a fire after carefully clearing an area of dead grass, so he doesn’t accidentally set the whole prairie on fire. He brings water from the creek, and Laura and Mary help their mother make a simple dinner of cornmeal cakes, fried slices of salted pork, and coffee for Ma and Pa. As they’re cleaning up the dinner dishes, they hear wolves howling not far away.
Pa and Ma discuss the possibility of staying permanently in the area where they’re camped and building a house there. The family prepares to go to bed, and Laura sees two eyes in the firelight. Thinking it’s a wolf, Pa gets his gun, but the “wolf” turns out to be Jack, who has survived crossing the creek and found his way to their campsite. The family rejoices, and Laura feels safer with Jack guarding them that night.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Prairie Day”
The Ingallses have decided to stay at their camp for at least a day, so the next morning, Pa goes hunting for fresh game for the family, and Ma washes and irons their clothes and linens. Laura and Mary play on the prairie all morning and come back to the wagon for their lunch.
Ma, Laura, and Mary talk about the Native Americans (referred to as “Indians” throughout the book, in keeping with nineteenth- and twentieth-century tradition). Laura and Mary are both apprehensive and curious about the Native Americans, and Ma tries to reassure them that they will be safe. However, the Native American people still legally own that area of Kansas, and the Ingallses are resettling there based on rumors that the territory will soon be opened up by the US government to white settlers. Ma isn’t sure when the territory will be opened and admits that “I just don’t like them [Native Americans]” (47).
After this conversation, Laura and Mary fall asleep in the shade. When Laura wakes up, Pa is coming back with two prairie hens and a rabbit for their dinner. After dinner, Pa plays the fiddle, which gently lulls Laura to sleep for a while. She wakes up thinking that the sound of Pa’s fiddle is the stars overhead singing to her. Then Laura and Mary go to bed, happy with their surroundings.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
These early chapters, and later ones that describe the family’s routines and settling-down process in Kansas, are characterized by descriptions of concrete everyday activities that young readers in the 1930s may not have been familiar with, such as making camp for the night in a covered wagon. These details would have provided a way for readers to imagine the sensory experiences of the pioneers, and since today’s audiences may be even more removed from these experiences, the book continues to communicate the experience of settlers to an audience separated from them by time and space.
As the family encounters the prairie for the first time, Laura at first dislikes the wide, open space that makes her feel as if the wagon isn’t moving. She has lived her whole life in Wisconsin’s heavy forests. However, her feelings about the prairie changes once she has a chance to explore it: “The wind sang a low, rustling song in the grass. […] But all these sounds made a great, warm, happy silence. Laura had never seen a place she liked so much as this place” (48-49). Laura is exhibiting both the adaptability that some children demonstrate, and a preference for a lack of constraint, symbolized by the wide open spaces of the prairie. The family’s isolation gives Laura both freedom and a sense of vulnerability at various points in the story. This theme continues throughout the book as the family settles even more onto the prairie.
These chapters introduce dynamics within the family as well. Ma tends to defer to Pa in most matters, reflecting nineteenth-century gender norms in which men were decision makers, while women were more passive and subservient to male authority figures. Pa and Ma seem to like and respect one another, but Pa is the force behind the family’s moves, while Ma restricts her authority to the domestic realm—instilling desirable feminine traits in Laura and Mary, caring for their younger sister Carrie, cooking, cleaning, laundering, and decorating the family’s living spaces. It is Ma who makes things “snug” and “tidy” while Pa protects and directs the family and takes charge of outdoor tasks.
These chapters also introduce a main theme of the book, nineteenth-century white Americans’ prejudices about Native. It’s apparent from Ma’s conversation with Laura and Mary in Chapter 4 that she is uneasy about, and afraid of, Native Americans. She will later make several comments that reveal and communicate this fear. Ma, unlike Pa, seems less confident that the government really will relocate Native Americans and allow white settlers to claim land in the territory, but she again echoes Pa’s reassurances about the possibility—a further reinforcement of his authority in the family.
Unlock all 76 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Laura Ingalls Wilder
