Comments on: Grasshoppers… at Church!?

By: Dr Laura

Dr Laura — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:55:53 +0000

Why would Pa travel all the way to Indian Territory, build a house, dig a well, plant a crop when he knew it was illegal? The lure of “cheap land” or “free land” was a strong one. He was a speculator.

There is a church in Hutchinson, KS that was built during the grasshopper plagues. The mortar between the bricks has bits of grasshoppers in it because they were so thick.

By: ramblingirl

ramblingirl — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:39:40 +0000

Whenever I read On the Way Home, I’m reminded that people all over were looking for the “promised land”. Laura and Almanzo were driving to the Land of the Big Red Apple, hopeful that it would be better than Dakota. They met people coming from Missouri saying how bad it was and for them not to go. They took a risk and for them it paid off. Pa seemed like a risk taker, some would say foolish, but optimistic nonetheless.

By: JimP

JimP — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:43:14 +0000

Maybe all the versions could be correct?

Seen as these plagues reached as large as 100 miles wide by 2,000 miles long, I imagine there could be diverse experiences due to environment and weather conditions.

Besides, I don’t want to give up the parade through the window

By: Kristi

Kristi — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:04:55 +0000

Maybe Pa’s decision to buy that land was influenced by advertisements and posters advertising land that was “fertile, without a stone or a stump”. It would not be surprising to find that land advertisements left out the fact that there was a grasshopper invasion going on…just a guess!

By: Roberta

Roberta — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:56:15 +0000

Rebecca, I didn’t mean to criticize your text with my comment. I’m sorry if it conveyed this impression. Of course I assume that you know the facts.

It was just that what you wrote about trying to merge the book with LIW’s real life plus the mention of Mr. Hanson.
Actually when I notice familiar names like Oleson or Hanson in records with a LIW-connection, I often catch myself thinking ‘Couldn’t it be…?’ against better knowledge.
Well, after some pondering about it only the bare bones of my thoughts were left: Mr. Hanson didn’t exist.

By: Rebecca Brammer

Rebecca Brammer — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:17:57 +0000

Sandra, it’s not that we were thinking oppositely, it’s just that I have a tendency to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I also thought, “What an idiot, to buy land in grasshopper territory — AFTER the grasshoppers had already struck!” Then I thought that surely Pa — or anyone, for that matter — couldn’t be so foolish and therefore he couldn’t have known until it was too late. Although I must admit I was still thinking that even if that was the case, how foolish to just go buy land somewhere without checking it out first. You know, ask the neighbors how the land is, how their crops tend to do, is the weather good for growing, any devastating conditions that have happened in recent years such as hail or drought… surely the grasshoppers would come up in such investigation!!!

I guess we’ll never know the details — what he knew, what he didn’t, why he made the decision he did…

And so, in deference to Laura’s obvious devotion to her Pa, I give him the benefit of the doubt, even though the evidence points to some very bad decision-making on his part!

By: Sandra Hume

Sandra Hume — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:08:44 +0000

Yes, I’m the speculator, Rebecca’s the fact-finder. I love these discussions — so much meat to all of it, isn’t there?

By: Rebecca Brammer

Rebecca Brammer — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:05:54 +0000

Thanks for sharing all this information with everyone, Roberta. I know about the real land transaction and all, it’s what I meant by the aside of “for sake of the story” but that may not have been (and probably wasn’t) clear to everyone reading. I was speculating on the fictional storyline of the Hansons trading the land and trying to save space explaining all that in what was already a long post… it’s one of the frustrating things about discussing Little House — are you talking about the real life people, or about the book characters, or both!? It makes discussion confusing at times, especially when your commentary is considering both angles. Hope it’s all clearer now!!

By: Sandra Hume

Sandra Hume — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:10:58 +0000

Of course, Nancy and Penny’s booklet! It’s such a treasure. The world of Little House needs more people like them to remind us of all this stuff we might speculate on.

By: Roberta

Roberta — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:26:30 +0000

Actually there was no Mr. Hanson at all, who sold the land with the dugout to Pa.
The land was a preemtion claim and it was relinquished before the Ingallses came to Minnesota. Pa filed on the land at the Land Office in New Ulm and after the required time he paid for it according to the law. So it wasn’t a bargain because it was infested by grasshoppers.

For further reading I highly recommend the booklet “Charles Ingalls an the U.S. Public Land Laws” by Nancy Cleveland and Penny Linsenmayer. These two ladies did a great job with their research. The booklet is available in the shop of the LIW-Museum in Walnut Grove.
You can also read Pa’s Land Patent online at
http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/patentSearch
(Search for Charles Ingalls and Minnesota)

As for the grasshoppers: As far as I understood the few pages I read about the plague, there were several big swarms of the locusts in the years between 1873 and 1877. So the “glittering cloud” appeared more than once as well as the hatching of the grasshoppers and their crawling away. I’m quite sure that Laura described her own experiences when she wrote about the grasshoppers. It’s just that the same things happened again in 1877.

Thinking of why Pa decided to stay in that area I tend to believe that he knew about the grasshoppers but he didn’t expect that they would come back and that it would be worse than before.