As with so many stories about the expansion of the American West, Little House on the Prairie Season 1, which is based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s semi-autobiographical novels and is now streaming on Netflix, begins with a search for something new. But Rebecca Sonnenshine’s retelling of the Ingalls family’s move to Kansas in the late 1800s makes one thing clear: Those dreams aren’t always easy to realize. “Even from the pilot, we were talking about this myth of America that was sold: ‘You can go out and do it on your own. What are you waiting for? The prairie is calling,’” the showrunner tells Tudum.
When young Laura Ingalls (Alice Halsey); her father, Charles, who she calls Pa (Luke Bracey); mother, Caroline, aka Ma (Crosby Fitzgerald); and older sister, Mary (Skywalker Hughes), move to the newly established town of Independence, they quickly discover that self-reliance won’t get them far. “The truth is, you can’t do it alone,” says Sonnenshine. “Even the name ‘Independence’ signifies something that isn’t completely true. You need community. You need to look out for each other. You need to reach out and find your family, your friends, make family out of friends, because the prairie doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t have any sympathy for you.”
The Ingalls follow that American myth West, only to be met with challenge after challenge. Instead, they discover something much more valuable on the wild prairie. In the face of natural disasters like fever and fires, as well as predicaments born out of human greed and prejudice, the family finds true community. In their small town, they form bonds with an Osage family not unlike their own, a war veteran and widower working through grief, and fellow settlers looking for a fresh start because, as Sonnenshine says, “no one can do it alone, and you shouldn’t feel like you have to.”
By the end of Little House on the Prairie Season 1, Charles, Caroline, Mary, and Laura have built a beautiful new life, with help from their new neighbors, but even after all they’ve overcome, they can’t hold on to it. Why not? Read on to learn the truth about the Osage land, why the Ingalls leave Independence, where they’re headed next, and more, with insights from Sonnenshine.
According to the series’ narrator, Laura, Pa explained to the girls that their life in the Big Woods of Wisconsin was “getting too crowded” and they needed a “fresh start in the West.” And on their long journey in that direction, Charles references a pamphlet advertising millions of acres of free land for the taking. But once he meets Dr. George Tann (Jocko Sims) and learns a land office has yet to be established in Independence, he begins to suspect that settling the prairie may not be as straightforward as promised.
When the Ingalls finally make it to Independence, Ma is shocked by how small it is. “There’s no school, there’s no church, there’s no post office. Caroline was absolutely determined that her kids would be educated, so the fact that there’s no school is a surprise,” Sonnenshine explains. “It’s not exactly what either one of them expected.”
In addition to Independence’s lack of development, Charles and Caroline are also surprised by Osage presence on the land, which they believed was unoccupied and therefore theirs to settle. That illusion is shattered at the end of Episode 1 when John Edwards (Warren Christie), a fellow settler from Tennessee, tells Charles that they’re all just speculating that the government is eventually going to step in and force the Osage out.
“The element of the land, who it belongs to, and the tensions around it, required a great deal of research,” says Sonnenshine. “We wanted to construct a story that really explored what happened: Settlers came and basically forced the Osage off the land. It’s not a pretty story, and it’s not a story where you can always point at people with obvious malicious intent. The government lured people out into places because that did their work for them.”
In the original Little House on the Prairie book, the third in Ingalls Wilder’s series, the Osage people are only introduced and explored from Laura’s distant point of view. But Sonnenshine’s series invites viewers into the daily lives of the Osage primarily through a parallel family — Mitchell (Meegwun Fairbrother), his wife, White Sun (Alyssa Wapanatâhk), and their daughter, Good Eagle (Wren Zhawenim Gotts), who is close to Laura’s age.
From the moment Laura lays eyes on Good Eagle, the ever-curious kid is determined to befriend her. “We created the character of Good Eagle, who’s a little like Laura — unconventional, a bit of a tomboy, with the same sort of struggles fitting into her family life that Laura has sometimes,” says Sonnenshine. “In the book, Laura is really intrigued by Native American culture that she doesn’t get to interact with, but [that] she sees on the periphery. It felt organic to the story to bring in a character she could know, have secrets with, learn from, find a lot in common with, and also figure out the differences she has with this character.”
As the two families get to know each other, the girls form a strong bond. When they go their separate ways in the season finale — more on that below — Laura and Good Eagle promise to stay in touch through letters, which Laura suggests could one day be made into a book. According to Sonnenshine, this moment is a nod to Laura’s future as an author, which will continue to be referenced in the show. “As we go through the seasons, we’re always laying the groundwork for: how did Laura become a writer? What are the experiences that led her to eventually write some of the most enduring books ever written?”
Through Charles’s frequent dreams, which involve sleepwalking, and an argument with Caroline about Mr. Edwards, whom she calls “another broken person,” we learn that Charles’s brother, George (Connor Paton), suffered from what we today know as PTSD after serving as a Union soldier in the Civil War.
In Episode 4, when Charles comes down with what Dr. Tann calls “intermittent fever,” caused by malaria, he revisits painful memories of George and a heated argument with his father (Martin Donovan) about getting his brother help. Charles had once planned to bring George to Kansas with the family before realizing he needed treatment instead. After overhearing Charles describe him as “broken,” George ran away, and Charles later discovered he had died by suicide. Ever since, Charles has carried guilt about his brother’s death, compounded by the fact that he never served in the war himself. In a sense, the journey West is also an attempt to distance himself from the pain of his past.
While the move allows Charles to leave family tragedy behind, it stirs up complicated emotions for Caroline. “Caroline believes deeply in her husband and loves him, but her family, her sisters in particular, are not so on board,” Sonnenshine says. “Because she loves her sisters, she has their voice in her head about all kinds of things, and she carries a lot of preconceived ideas about people into the West.”
Those doubts continue to follow Caroline through letters from home, leaving her uncertain whether the family should stay in Independence, especially after she discovers she’s pregnant in Episode 1 and after learning the truth about the Osage land. But during her own fever dreams, in which she confronts her sister Eliza (Catherine Bérubé), Caroline makes peace with their decision and embraces the life she and her family are building on the prairie.
When Laura later succumbs to intermittent fever, she dreams of her grandmother, played by Megan Follows, best known to generations of viewers as Anne Shirley in the 1985 adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. That reunion, along with the heartfelt letters Charles later exchanges with his father, suggests that while the Ingalls may have left Wisconsin behind, they haven't left their families behind forever.
The prejudices that Sonnenshine and Gorman Wettels say Caroline carries with her West from Wisconsin, thanks in part to her upbringing, are most clearly on display in her early interactions with Edwards, whom Charles enlists to help in building their home. When she discovers Edwards covertly drinking whiskey one evening, Caroline worries that his habit may endanger her family and tells him not to return until he quits. After Charles hears of this confrontation, he explains that Edwards’s issues are deep-rooted.
“A lot of people — lots of single men — came West, looking for a different life,” says Sonnenshine. “They were coming out of the shadow of the Civil War. I really wanted to portray somebody who had lost a great deal and was struggling to find meaning in his life.” The full extent of Edwards’s traumatic backstory isn’t confirmed until Episode 5. Speaking with Dr. Tann, he explains that six years earlier, he came home from the war only to discover that his entire family had died of cholera. The unspeakable tragedy nearly broke Edwards, but being part of a community in Independence allows him to begin to heal. “When he meets the Ingalls family, he’s in a dark place,” Sonnenshine shares. “He really connects with these girls and with Charles, and eventually with Caroline, and it gives him a reason to keep going.”
The connections built with Edwards, as well as the Mitchell family and other settlers like Emily Henderson (Barrett Doss), also play a key role in Caroline’s evolution. “Out here on her own, away from [most of] her family, she starts to see people for who they are. She sees the humanity in people. She sees the goodness in them,” says Sonnenshine. “She becomes a different person, which, as she says at the end of the season, she likes who she’s become here. It’s changed her.”
In Episode 7, the overarching question of what will become of the Osage land now that so many settlers have moved there is answered. At the start of the episode, the Osage chiefs gather to possibly sign a treaty that will result in the tribe moving to Indian territory in Oklahoma. At the gathering, Indian Agent Isaac Gibson (Matthew Bennett), lays out the government’s offer: “The Kansas lands will be purchased for $1.25 an acre. Those funds will then be used to secure individual allotments for all Osage.” After careful consideration, one of the chiefs, who goes by Governor Joe (Talee Redcorn, who also served as the series’ Osage language consultant), delivers an impassioned speech about the future of their tribe before refusing to sign the treaty.
With help from Mitchell, the Osage eventually negotiate two amendments to the deal: They must be permitted to hunt buffalo beyond the borders of their new territory, and the new land will not be allotted individually, but instead be given to the Osage communally. “We wanted to explore how the Osage were able to negotiate. They were great negotiators. They used all their skills and leverage to get a deal,” says Sonnenshine. “Was it a deal they would have chosen otherwise? Probably not. But they were able to make a deal they felt they could live with at the time.”
Mitchell, feeling a responsibility to his people and a need for a new beginning, decides to follow the Osage to their new land in Oklahoma, along with White Sun and Good Eagle. But they’re not the only ones leaving Independence at the end of the season.
In the finale, Charles and Caroline find out that the family who bought their land in Wisconsin defaulted on the deal. They were counting on that money to cover their growing debt, so the news immediately affects them, forcing Charles to look into working on the railroad. As we learn at the end of Episode 7, railroad companies — in coordination with the government — were responsible for distributing the false flyers that drew so many out to the prairie to force a land deal with the Osage that would open the door for railroad expansion. But when Charles asks about the project, Eli James (Michael Hough), who works for the railroad, tells him that, for now, jobs are available only in Nebraska or Colorado.
To make matters even more dire, Charles also finds out that, with the Osage land deal done, the Homestead Act that brought the Ingalls to Kansas no longer applies — the government has bought the land from the Osage at $1.25 an acre, and now settlers have just two weeks to come up with $1.50 per acre or be kicked off their claims. Of course, the Ingalls family can’t afford it. James offers to set up a loan for Charles if he takes one of those far-flung jobs with the railroad, but he doesn’t want to leave Caroline and the three girls.
Conditions only continue to deteriorate for the Ingalls as a prairie fire breaks out, ravaging their crops. Without the promise of a harvest, the family is left with nothing, but instead of heading back to the big woods, Caroline proposes they “keep going.” So they pack up their wagon once again.
“The Ingalls were not in control, and they did not really leave on their own terms,” says Sonnenshine. But that doesn’t mean they lost hope. “This family moved around a lot. They were always in search of something. They were always seeking, and you could never knock them down. That’s what [Ingalls Wilder’s] books are about — if it doesn’t work out in one place, they’re still together, they’re still a family, and there’s something in the future that’s waiting for them.”
Yes, and longtime Little House fans know exactly what that means!
“As you see by the end of the first season, they are en route to Walnut Grove and to meet the Oleson family,” Sonnenshine tells Tudum, referencing the forthcoming appearance of Nellie Oleson, Laura’s infamous foe, who’s introduced in the series’ fourth novel, On the Banks of Plum Creek. With Season 2 already in the works, Willa Dunn has been cast in the role of Nellie, who lives in the Minnesota town that Edwards proposes the family head to next.
That’s right, this time around, the Ingalls are joined by Edwards, and as the season comes to a close, he’s seen riding beside their iconic covered wagon. That final image, Sonnenshine says, is emblematic of the show. “You keep going, and you keep hope alive.”
There’s even more to discover on a second trip across the prairie. Revisit all eight episodes of Little House on the Prairie Season 1, now streaming on Netflix.
