Trading for Pet and Patty

Trading for Pet and Patty is the moment the Ingalls family completes its transformation from Eastern emigrants into Western settlers. One day, on the long road to Indian country, Pa sold the tired brown horses that had pulled the covered wagon across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, and in their place he got two small young black horses with soft gentle eyes and long tails. "They're western horses," Pa said. "Very strong but very gentle." When Laura asked what their names were, Pa said that she and Mary could choose names for the horses. So they called one "Pet" and the other "Patty." The naming is the first act of ownership the girls perform in the new country, and it binds them to the animals in a way that mere transport never could.

The Trade and the Journey West

The trade comes after a long and grueling passage. The family had left their little house in Wisconsin because Pa said there were too many people there now, and wild animals did not stay in a country where there were so many people. He liked a country where the animals lived without fear, where he could see them looking at him in the forest and eating fruit from the trees. The tired brown horses had carried them across the wide Mississippi River before the ice broke, and across many other rivers and creeks, day after day seeing nothing but grass and a big sky. The new black horses, by contrast, are explicitly western: strong but gentle, suited to the endless flat land covered with tall grass that is Kansas. The exchange is thus not merely practical but symbolic — the old Eastern horses give way to animals born of the very country the family is seeking.

The acquisition of Pet and Patty also completes the family's traveling arrangement. Pa put his gun inside the wagon where he could reach it quickly, and he put his fiddle between two blankets in order to keep it safe. Their dog Jack went under the wagon, and they drove away. With the new horses in harness, the family's mobile household is fully assembled: the gun for protection, the fiddle for music, the dog for companionship, and now the two black horses for strength and gentleness.

Pet and Patty in the Life of the Family

Pet and Patty quickly prove themselves more than mere beasts of burden. When Pa and Mr Edwards built the stable for Pet and Patty in one day, the horses gained a home of their own beside the little house on the High Prairie. The very next morning, Laura found a surprise waiting in the stable: a little colt with long ears stood beside Pet. When Laura ran toward it, gentle Pet put back her ears and showed her teeth. "Stay back, Laura!" Pa shouted. "She could bite you." Then he said to Pet, "You know we won't hurt your baby, Pet." Pet let Pa touch the baby, but she didn't let Laura or Mary go near her. The moment reveals the horses' capacity for fierce maternal protection, a gentleness that has limits, and it teaches Laura an early lesson about respecting the boundaries of animals.

The horses' courage is tested most severely in the wolf encounter. Riding Patty across the prairie one afternoon, Pa was surrounded by a pack of fifty wolves, the biggest he had ever seen, with a leader a meter tall. "Patty was trembling all over," Pa said. "She was so scared. I was, too. But I made her walk." When Patty tried to run, Pa pulled the reins hard and made her walk, because wolves will chase and hurt a running horse. The wolves walked along with them like a pack of dogs, jumping and playing with each other, and the family was lucky they weren't hungry. When they got near the creek, the leader turned down toward the creek and the rest of the pack followed him, and only then did Pa let Patty go. The episode establishes Patty as a horse of remarkable steadiness under terror, and it shows Pa's trust in her — a trust that saves both their lives.

The Horses and the Wider Prairie World

The horses also connect the family to the larger movements of the prairie. One day, cattle came running out of the dusty grass not far from the stable, their feet beating the ground. A cowboy on a black-and-white horse rode faster to get in front of them, waving his big hat and shouting at the cattle as he moved them along, and they all went over a low hill and disappeared. Laura ran around outside, waving her hat and shouting wildly, until Ma stopped her: "A young lady shouldn't shout like that." The cattle drive is the horses' world in motion — the same world of open range and herding that Pet and Patty, as western horses, belong to, and it stirs in Laura a longing for the cowboys' freedom that she cannot yet name.

Departure and Legacy

The horses are present at the family's departure from Indian Territory as much as at their arrival. When Pa learned that the government in Washington was sending soldiers to make the settlers leave, he refused to wait. "No, Scott!" said Pa. "I won't stay here until the soldiers take me away like a criminal. The government in Washington told us it was all right to build our houses here. But if now they want us to go, we'll go. We won't wait for the soldiers to make us leave. We're going now!" The family loaded the wagon once more, and Pet and Patty pulled them away from the little house they had built with such care. The horses that had carried the family into the West now carried them out of it, their strength and gentleness enduring through the family's greatest reversal. Throughout the book, Pet and Patty remain what they were at the moment of the trade: western horses, strong but very gentle, the living bridge between the Ingalls family and the prairie they came to love and were forced to leave.