Removal of white settlers from Indian Territory

The Removal of white settlers from Indian Territory is the U.S. government order that hangs over the entire novel as a slow-building threat and finally becomes the cause of the Ingalls family's departure from their prairie home. It is the story's central irony: the same government in Washington that told settlers it was all right to build houses in Indian Territory later decides to move them out, reversing its own promise and forcing the family to abandon everything they have built. The order is never shown as a written document or a formal proclamation; it arrives as rumor, then as report, and finally as an imminent military action, and its progress from whisper to certainty structures the second half of the book.