Netflix is presenting a new version of Little House on the Prairie, a story from our nation’s early frontier history, based on the popular series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
When Wilder started writing the book series in the early 1930s, it was as a fond salute to her own childhood memories. Wilder was born shortly after the Civil War, in 1867, in the very log cabin she describes in her first book, Little House in the Big Woods. That book, and her later ones, detailed the joys, the difficulties and the hard work involved in pioneer life — as seen, and told, from the perspective of a precocious young girl.
Wilder loved her Ma and Pa, and her siblings, but she observed them all carefully, and perceptively. She was to Little House on the Prairie what John-Boy was to The Waltons, another nostalgic family TV series set during an earlier time — in that case, the Depression.
The characters of both John-Boy and Laura displayed a gift for writing early on, and narrated their family’s stories. Michael Landon, after spending years as Little Joe on Bonanza, brought Little House on the Prairie to NBC in the 1970s, casting himself as the patriarch, Pa Ingalls. But the storytelling, as in the books, belonged to little Laura — played, in that series, by a young Melissa Gilbert.
That Little House series was very popular, and ran from 1974 to 1983. Especially in the early episodes, it was faithful to the original books and characters. When an Osage Indian chief came by the Ingalls cabin, Pa invited him in for a sit and a smoke. Ma was frightened, as was Laura’s elder sister, but Laura was charmed, and sympathetic to his tribe’s plight.