The Beginning

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born in 1867 in Pepin, Wisconsin and moved west to Kansas with her family at age 2 1/2 to get away from the cramped forest and the people moving into it. Laura felt miserable and homesick in the covered wagon and wished that she could escape and roam free. They finally settled on a flat piece of land that was, even though they didn't know, on the Osage Reservation for the seven bands of Osage Indians. Pa was so happy that he finally found the perfect place to live that he did not care about the indians and took to plowing the land for grain. While they lived there, Laura's other sister, Carrie, was born while Pa took Mary and Laura to see a deserted Indian camp. They stayed not even for a year when the owner of Pa's old farm in Wisconsin wrote to him that he didn't want to pay for the land anymore. Now the Ingalls had to move back and leave their Kansas prairie land that was just cleared of indians. This marks the end of Laura's first adventure. " We rode in a covered wagon all day, everyday. " - Laura Ingalls Wilder