Appeasing the Indians

Appeasing the Indians is the survival strategy the Ingalls family adopts in Indian Territory, a rule of non-confrontation and generous giving that Caroline Ingalls practices at the door of the little house and Charles Ingalls endorses as the only sane policy toward their Osage neighbors. The rule governs every encounter with the Indians, from the first two visitors who took the tobacco and cornbread to the silent chief who smoked with Pa, and it ultimately frames the family's understanding of Great Soldier's diplomacy. More than a household policy, appeasement becomes the family's moral and practical compass in a land where they are uninvited guests, and it shapes Laura's education in fear, obedience, and the limits of hospitality.

The Rule Takes Shape at the Door

The rule was born of terror and necessity. When two Indians came to the house while Pa was away hunting, Ma faced them alone. She gave them what they wanted — all of Pa's tobacco and a great deal of cornbread — and afterward confessed her fear openly: "Oh, Charles! I was afraid!" Pa's response was not anger at the loss of his tobacco but approval of her conduct. "You did the right thing," he told her. "We don't want to make enemies of the Indians." The principle was thus established in a single exchange: the cost of appeasement, measured in tobacco and cornbread, was trivial compared with the cost of enmity. The two visitors wore only fresh skunk skins around their waists, a detail that lingered in the family's memory and marked the encounter as strange and slightly comic even as it was frightening.

The rule was not merely about giving, however. It was also about restraint, and the restraint fell hardest on Jack. When Pa went hunting, he ordered the dog to stay and guard the family, and he gave the girls a direct command: "Don't untie him, girls." The command was a corollary of appeasement — Jack's protective fury, if unleashed, would have undone every gesture of goodwill. Laura felt the tension of this rule acutely. When Jack suddenly stood up and growled, the hair on his neck standing straight up and his eyes red and angry, Laura was afraid, for Jack had never growled at her before. She looked over her shoulder and saw two wild men coming closer on the Indian trail, tall and thin and fierce-looking, with reddish-brown skin, black shining eyes, and feathers on their heads. The sight was Laura's first real encounter with the people her family was trying to appease, and it taught her that the rule existed because the danger was real.

The Silent Chief and the Limits of Speech

Appeasement reached its most refined form in the visit of the tall Indian chief who came to the house one day. The chief said "How!" to Pa, and Pa, holding Jack, replied "How!" and tied the dog to the bed. The chief came in and sat down by the fire, and Pa sat down next to him. They sat there, friendly but not talking, while Ma finished cooking dinner. Laura and Mary watched from their bed in the corner, unable to take their eyes from the visitor. He was so still that the beautiful eagle feathers in his hair did not move. He wore trousers made of animal skins, and his moccasins were covered with beads. Pa and the chief ate silently, then Pa gave the chief some tobacco for his pipe. They filled their pipes, lighted them, and silently smoked until the pipes were empty. When the chief finally spoke, Pa shook his head and said, "No speak." The chief got up and went away without a sound.

The scene was appeasement reduced to its purest form: no words, only shared food, shared tobacco, and shared silence. Pa later reflected that he thought the visitor was an Osage and that the language he heard was French, which he wished he could speak. Ma's response was more guarded: "I think Indians should stay together with other Indians," she said, "and we'll do the same." Pa reassured her: "Don't worry, Caroline. That Indian was very friendly. And their camps down along the creek are quiet enough. If we're polite to them and watch Jack, we won't have any trouble." The formula was explicit — politeness plus vigilance — and it held until the very next morning, when Pa opened the door to find Jack standing on the Indian trail showing all his teeth, with the tall Indian sitting very still on his horse in front of him. When the Indian saw Pa, he lifted his gun and pointed it straight at Jack. Pa ran to the trail and pulled Jack out of the way, and the Indian rode on. The incident showed the fragility of the rule: one wrong move by the dog could have turned appeasement into bloodshed.

The Rule Under Strain as Spring Brings More Indians

As spring came and Pa worked hard getting ready to plant potatoes, with Pet and Patty pulling the heavy plough through the rich, treeless, stoneless earth, the pressure on the rule intensified. Now many Indians came riding along the Indian trail. Indians were everywhere. Laura could hear their guns in the creeks when they were hunting. Indians often came to the house. Some of them were friendly, and some were not. All of them wanted food and tobacco, and Ma gave them what they wanted. But most of the food in the house was hidden. The rule of appeasement had become a policy of managed scarcity: give openly, but conceal the bulk of the provisions. Jack was miserable all the time, always tied up, lying and hating the Indians. Laura and Mary were not surprised to see Indians anymore, but they always felt safer near Pa or Jack. The children's comfort depended on the two protectors the rule kept apart — the father who negotiated and the dog who was restrained.

The strain of the rule was also a strain on Laura's developing sense of right and wrong. She had wanted to untie Jack to eat those Indians, a childish fantasy of violence that the family's policy explicitly forbade. Ma's discipline reinforced the rule's reach into daily life: when Laura shouted like an Indian while playing, Ma corrected her, and when Laura wished she could be a cowboy, Ma told her to stop, insisting that a young lady shouldn't shout like that. The rule of appeasement toward the Indians was paired with a rule of propriety for the girls — both were about controlling impulses that could bring danger or disgrace. Even the family's domestic order reflected the same logic: at the first supper in the new house, Laura sat up straight on her log chair, used her knife and fork nicely as Ma had taught her, and said nothing, because children must not speak at the table until they are spoken to. The household ran on obedience, and the obedience extended to the family's dealings with its unpredictable neighbors.

Great Soldier's Diplomacy and the Vindication of Appeasement

The rule of appeasement was vindicated in the end, though in a way the family could not have foreseen. After the night of terrible noise and fear, Pa went down the creek road in the morning and returned in the late afternoon to say everything was all right. He had gone up and down the creek and seen many empty Indian camps. All the Indian tribes had left, except the Osages. He had met an Osage in the forest who could speak English, and the man told him that all the tribes except the Osages wanted to kill the settlers. The tall Indian who had visited the house, who had ridden so far and so fast that night, had done so because he did not want them to kill the white people. He was an Osage chief, and his name was Great Soldier. "He went on arguing with them day and night," Pa said, "until the other Osages agreed with him. Then he told the other tribes that the Osages were ready to fight them to save the white settlers." The noise in the camps had been the tribes howling at each other, and in the end the other tribes did not want to fight Great Soldier and the Osages, so they went away. "That's one good Indian!" Pa said.

The appeasement the family had practiced — the tobacco, the cornbread, the silent smoking, the politeness and the watching of Jack — had been mirrored and magnified by Great Soldier's own diplomacy. He had argued day and night, risking his standing among his own people, to save the very settlers who were living uninvited on Indian land. The family's small acts of giving had been met by a chief's great act of protection. Yet the vindication was bittersweet, for the rule of appeasement was also a rule of farewell. As the Indians left, the women and children came riding behind the men, little naked brown Indians no bigger than Mary and Laura, their straight black hair blowing in the wind and their black eyes shining with happiness. Laura looked and looked at the Indian children, and they looked at her. She had a sudden wish to be a little Indian girl, to ride naked in the wind and the sun. When an Indian mother rode by with a baby in a basket at the side of her horse, Laura looked straight into the bright eyes of the little papoose, black as a night when no stars shine, and she wanted it. "Quiet, Laura," Pa said. "The Indian woman wants to keep her baby." Laura began to cry. The little papoose was gone, and she was never going to see it again. "I've never heard of such a thing," Ma said. "Why do you want an Indian baby, of all things?" "Its eyes are so black," Laura cried. She could not say what she meant. No one was hungry for dinner. Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura stayed by the door and looked at the long line of Indians until nothing was left but silence and emptiness. All the world seemed very quiet and lonely. The rule of appeasement had kept the family alive, but it had also kept them apart from the people they had appeased, and Laura's grief marked the true cost of the policy — a cost measured not in tobacco or cornbread, but in a connection that the rule itself had made impossible.