One day Pa announced that the Indians had left their little camp on the prairie and asked Laura and Mary if they wanted to see it. The girls jumped up and down with excitement, and Pa said, "Come on then, let's go." The ground was hot under their feet as they went farther and farther into the big prairie, until at last they went down into the little valley where the Indians had camped. Laura and Mary looked around at the small animals, flowers, and trees, and found it a beautiful secret place. Laura asked Pa whether there were other Indian camps on the prairie, and he answered, "Yes, Laura." When she asked if the Indians would ever come back, Pa said, "I don't know," adding "Perhaps."

The Discovery of the Beads

Laura held one of Pa's hands and Mary held the other, and together they looked at the Indians' camp. There were old campfires, and they could see where Indian horses had eaten the grass, where big and small moccasins had walked, and where Indians had cooked and eaten. Suddenly Laura shouted, "Look! Look!" Something bright blue was shining on the ground. She picked it up, and it was a beautiful blue bead. Laura shouted with excitement. Then Mary saw a red bead, and Laura saw a green one, and they forgot everything except beads. They found white beads and brown beads, and more and more red and blue beads. All that afternoon they looked for beads. When they had finished, the sun was going down. Laura had a handful of beads, and so did Mary. Pa put them carefully in his pockets, and they all went home together.

The Gift to Carrie

Supper was cooking on the fire when they arrived, and Baby Carrie was playing on the floor. "Sorry we're late!" said Pa, and then he took the beads out of his pockets and showed them to Ma. "But look what the girls found," he said. "Oh, they're beautiful!" Ma said with a smile. Laura thought the beads looked even prettier than before. She touched her beads with her finger and watched them shine. "These are mine," she said. Then Mary said, "Carrie can have mine." Ma waited for Laura to speak. But Laura didn't want to say anything. She felt all hot inside and wished that Mary wasn't always such a good girl. But she couldn't let Mary be better than she was. So she said, slowly, "Carrie can have mine, too." "You're good little girls," Ma said. She put Mary's beads into Mary's hands, and Laura's into Laura's hands, and she said, "You can make a pretty necklace for Carrie to wear around her neck."

The Necklace and Its Aftermath

Mary and Laura sat side by side on their bed and made Carrie's necklace. They didn't say anything. Perhaps Mary felt sweet and good inside, but Laura didn't. When she looked at Mary she wanted to hit her. So she didn't look at her again. The beads made a beautiful necklace. Carrie laughed when she saw it. Then Ma tied it around Carrie's little neck and Laura felt a little bit better. It looked so pretty on her. But when Carrie felt the beads on her neck, she tried to break the necklace. So Ma untied it and put it away. "Carrie can wear it when she's older," Ma said. Laura still wanted those pretty beads for herself. But she knew it had been a wonderful day. She knew she was never going to forget the Indian camp.

The Beads in the Larger Story of Objects

The beads join a series of treasured objects in the Ingalls household that mark the family's life on the prairie. Like the bright new tin cups that appeared in Laura's stocking on Christmas morning, and the combs with bright stars that Pa brought back from Independence — Mary's star blue and Laura's red — the beads are small, beautiful things that carry outsized emotional weight for the girls. The episode also foreshadows the family's deeper entanglement with the Indians who inhabit the same land. The same prairie that yielded the beads would later bring the Ingalls face to face with Indians entering their house, taking cornbread and tobacco and the bundle of furs Pa had been saving to trade in Independence. The beads, found at a camp the Indians had left, are among the few objects in the book that pass from Indian hands to the girls' possession, a quiet exchange that stands in contrast to the later, more fraught encounters. When the family finally packed the wagon to leave Indian Territory, the plough was the only thing they could not take — but the memory of the Indian camp and its beads was something Laura carried with her, a secret place of beauty that she knew she would never forget.