Julia’s Reviews > Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder > Status Update
Julia
is on page 174 of 640
“But in all the Great Plains literature to come [...] every writer would be echoing the assumptions of the Turner thesis. It was a manifesto of the country’s willful refusal to recognize the limitations of the land.”
Wonder what precisely would be the Berry-an critique of the pioneer Boomers v. eastern Stickers. The pioneers of the Dakota territory did not live with the land as in his agricultural writing.
— Dec 20, 2020 11:00AM
Wonder what precisely would be the Berry-an critique of the pioneer Boomers v. eastern Stickers. The pioneers of the Dakota territory did not live with the land as in his agricultural writing.
1 like · Like flag
Comments Showing 1-3 of 3 (3 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Julia
(new)
-
added it
Dec 20, 2020 11:08AM
I suppose one could say the pioneers of the Dakota Territory were going off to “seek their fortune” and not live in harmony with the land. Instead, they had a consumptive posture toward it, asking of the land something it couldn’t give. I can’t help but have sympathy, though, for the Ingallses and the Wilders, who were also dreadfully poor and could not overcome the ecological limits of their chosen settlements. They were seeking their fortunes because they needed a living.
reply
|
flag
Yesss. A really good pioneer story that gets at this is the Emigrants quartet by Vilhem Moberg (about the Swedes who settled across the Great Plains, esp Minnesota).
