Songs in the Night

I picked a wild sunflower, and as I looked into its golden heart, such a wave of homesickness came over me that I almost wept. I wanted Mother, with her gentle voice and quiet firmness; I longed to hear Father’s jolly songs and to see his twinkling blue eyes.

—LAURA INGALLS WILDER

We know that when Pa’s fiddle sang it played many tunes of gaiety and good cheer to the little family on the prairie. Family singing was popular in the days before electricity made entertainment available at the push of a button. Humorous tunes such as “The Arkansas Traveler,” “Captain Jinks,” and “Oh! Susanna” were very familiar to the Ingallses through Pa’s one-man musical band. The family’s song collection contained an extensive number of tunes for mere enjoyment.

Yet undoubtedly the most impactful songs in Pa’s repertoire were the many hymns that the family—including Laura—sang together. In the Little House series, Laura made it clear the many fun and entertaining songs the family sang were not sufficient to sustain the family through rugged days of prairie living, particularly during a hard winter. The little family needed stronger stuff than mere melody to keep hope and faith alive as tough times kept coming the farther west they moved.

The fact is, Laura referred time and again to the many hymns and sacred songs that Pa played to strengthen the family in their various little homes. I count approximately thirty hymns that are either from hymnbooks or from what they’d learned from memory, lacking those books because of their cost. Even patriotic standards could be made into hymns to teach civic virtue, such as “Hail, Columbia” by Joseph Hopkinson:

Hail Columbia, happy land !

Hail, ye heroes, Heaven-born band!

Firm, united let us be,

Rallying ’round our liberty,

As a band of brothers joined

Peace and safety we shall find.

“Hail, Columbia” may not be particularly religious, but it was found in many hymnals of the day and did suggest there was a “future and a hope” for the brave who were making our country a “city upon a hill,” as the governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, had said of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in his 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity.”

The Ingalls family and the Wilder brothers especially needed to believe there was a future and a hope laid out for them as they continually took on nature’s raw edge in a new land. They were building on that first golden dream of the pilgrims. Nation building requires stirring words, long commitment, and stout hymns.

Both families would have been willing to settle for good in Minnesota—where the rainfall was slightly more regular than what was to be found near De Smet—but the grasshopper plagues of the late 1870s forced the Ingallses to keep moving farther into ever more troublesome territory, as it turned out. Even the more prosperous Almanzo, whose family was well off, went west too. He was looking for cheaper land than could be found near his father’s farm in Spring Valley, Minnesota. None of the pioneers, young or old, ever quite knew what lay ahead. But, then, do we even now? The times may be different, but the challenges are still great.

Songs Give Vision to a Journey

The fact is, heaven and fellowship with the Almighty become more and more important as our hopes face the stern tests of life. We discover that the promise of a new sunrise may only presage the next storm beyond the horizon. So perhaps it is good to look at what songs of the faith did for the Ingalls family and also for Almanzo in order to better understand the consolations and encouragements of what are still called the songs of Zion, that city upon a hill.

Fortunately, we are greatly aided in our understanding of Laura’s faith background by knowing the name of a hymnal that included many of the hymns that so greatly influenced her. Pure Gold for the Sunday School was first published in 1871 and is referred to familiarly by Carrie Ingalls in an August 1940 letter to Laura as the hymnal belonging to her and perhaps passed down by Pa and Ma. (Hymn 18 from Pure Gold is referred to in Little Town on the Prairie.)

Published by Biglow & Main, the hymnal was edited by Robert Lowry and W. Howard Doane, two men who believed working for Jesus was a delight and a joy. Lowry would have preferred to have been known as a preacher but is now mostly remembered for his five hundred hymns. Doane, who was president of his father’s company by the age of thirty-four, devoted almost as much time to his music as he did to his business. He was a genius at composition, and the team of W. H. Doane and the blind lyricist Fanny Crosby produced the most popular hymns of Mrs. Wilder’s day. Indeed, an astonishing number of Pure Gold’s texts are still in hymnbooks even today.

“Rock of Ages,” “Amazing Grace,” “Revive Us Again,” “Close to Thee,” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” “Rescue the Perishing,” “Jesus Loves Me (This I Know),” “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds,” “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us,” “Shall We Gather at the River?,” “Jubilate Deo,” and “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” can all still be found in hymnals. And all these hymns had a profound influence in shaping the family values of their time. You can hear sermons and you can hear sermons, but evidence shows that most of us don’t really remember sermons as much as we remember oft-repeated songs.

Melody, rhythm, and rhyme make words stick to the brain.

Songs of the Lord’s Presence

The standards in Pure Gold assure that

When gloomy clouds across the sky,

Cast shadows o’er the land,

Bright rays of light illume my path,

For Jesus holds my hand.

The pioneers found they could endure almost any circumstance—even if they didn’t know the reason behind it—if they felt God was present with them in “a mysterious way, His wonders to perform,” as William Cowper said in his hymn. Maybe Jesus’s hand was guiding, maybe only providing a feeling of presence, but the overpowering sense of divine company was the gist of many a hymn. The great unknowns of life can bring out a spirit of adventure in us, but all too often they only make us nervous, wary, and fearful. How about independent or self-reliant? Never entirely—we need the divine after all.

Christian, the lead character in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, has all his sins and the burden of them taken away at the cross, which comes early in his journey. But as a pilgrim he still has to make it to the Celestial City, so he is involved in encounters with Hypocrisy, Mistrust, Apollyon, Pagan, Talkative, and Vanity Fair. (What Bunyan would have thought of the secular magazine’s appropriation of Vanity Fair one can only shudder to think!)

The Ingallses would have understood Christian’s situation. And they would have known of Pilgrim’s Progress, which in their time was the second most read book in America after the Bible. However, the question would have remained for them: Just how do I take Jesus’s hand and go on with him? What does it mean to have God’s presence through the journey?

A New Song

For the Ingallses, I believe what was of foremost importance was that they had a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This was thought to be possible and was preached by the major revivalists and evangelicals of their era. This view was a great change from previous centuries when many of the great pulpiteers were more inclined to talk about God’s attributes than about his personal and loving nature. From their viewpoint, God was angry at sinners and saints alike: at the sinner for being a sinner and at the saint for not being a “good enough” saint.

If the first awakening of American Protestant churches came in the 1750s under the influence of Jonathan Edwards, the second awakening came through the work of D. L. Moody. Moody became a traveling evangelist shortly before the start of the Civil War and continued his ministry until the end of the century.

Moody was a businessman turned lay preacher who once had headed the Chicago branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). When he began his lay travels, guest speakers filled his home pulpit. One day a young fellow from England named Harry Moorhouse came asking to fill the pulpit. His only recommendation seems to have been a previous letter he had written to the evangelist on his own. Moody didn’t quite know what to do, but while he was absent on yet another speaking engagement, his elders decided to let Moorhouse speak.

What Moorhouse preached was that contrary to the belief that God hated sinners, he actually loved them. Emma, Moody’s wife, reported this to D. L., who then replied to her, “He is wrong.” But the next Sunday, Moody heard Moorhouse preach for himself from the text “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16). Moody later reported that the speaker “went from Genesis to Revelation giving proof that God loves the sinner, and before he got through, two or three of my sermons were spoiled.”

Moody admitted, “I never knew up to that time that God loved us so much.” The second great awakening was on its way. It was the awakening where we came to know that “Jesus holds my hand.”

Songs of Promise

In the terrible year of 1876, Freddie Ingalls died. Pa and Ma’s only son had never been strong, and he did not live out his first year. The loss of their son meant the Ingallses would never have that vital boy who would help his father feed the cattle and do the chores of the farm.

Then, in another terrible year, when family finances were still in bad shape from having to pay the doctor for trying to save Freddie, Mary became ill and eventually lost her sight. This was in 1879, and again the doctor’s bills mounted. It would have been easy for the Ingallses to have thought themselves accursed by the time they came to the period depicted in Laura’s By the Shores of Silver Lake. As it was, Mary never complained and the family continued to look forward with song. One such song of encouragement was “Mountain of the Lord” by Robert Lowry:

Yes! a brighter morn is breaking,

Better days are coming on;

All the world will be awaking

In the new and golden dawn.

Refrain:

And many nations shall come, and say,

Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.

It can take a long time before the “brighter morn” breaks. Yet the Ingallses still could feel that they were part of a great dream to make America “a city upon a hill.”

Although the hymn “Mountain of the Lord” is derived from the Old Testament (see Isaiah 2:2–3), the Ingallses would have regarded their efforts as part of bringing the kingdom of God to the prairies. The death of Freddie was tragic, but it was not God’s judgment. Mary’s blindness was a trial, but it was not the end. “All the world will be awaking in the new and golden dawn,” but sometimes it takes the eyes of faith to see it.

The old hymns taught that being at peace with God does not mean one always has to understand the ways of God. Instead, hope is often focused on the belief that life will be better further on—sometimes all the way further on to heaven.

“The Happy Land” by Andrew Young, which is noted as “Ma’s favorite” hymn by music historian Dr. Dale Cockrell, is found in the books Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, and By the Shores of Silver Lake. Laura and her sisters often sang,

There is a happy land,

Far, far away;

Where saints in glory stand,

Bright, bright as day….

Bright in that happy land

Beams every eye;

Kept by a Father’s hand,

Love cannot die.

Oh, then, to glory run,

Be a crown and kingdom won,

And bright above the sun

We reign for aye.

How different the pioneering perspective becomes from this point of view! Pioneers weren’t exploiters of a virgin paradise, as some historians declared; they were visionaries bringing the kingdom of God to unsettled lands. The crown and the glory are abundant rewards for work well done against all odds.

The praise that was on the little family’s lips was the praise of those who were counted worthy to suffer for such a cause. Mere personal gain didn’t come into it. Pa wasn’t going to become rich; he only wanted to prove he was a worthy pioneer. We know that Laura and Almanzo did not really prosper out west or even that much in the Ozarks, at least not through farming. But they expected the reward might come later on. One can work for an earthly paradise that isn’t attained yet still believe that real happiness is found only in the hereafter. Laura could love the pioneer experience and still know this.

Spirituals for Work and Play

Oh, roll the ole chariot along,

Roll the ole chariot along,

If ye don’t hang on behin’….

Goin’ to join with the hundred and forty-four thousand….

If ye don’t hang on behin’.

These words were sung as Pa and several others headed out for Volga, South Dakota, during the long winter of 1880–81. Regarded as a spiritual in most quarters, “Roll the Ole Chariot Along” probably found its way west as a work song to keep workers in rhythm as they swung picks and shovels or, in Pa’s case, as men pumped a railroad handcart out to where others were working to clear the railroad line. The folks in De Smet needed the shipments of food and other supplies that would roll in from the East on trains.

The reference to joining the “hundred and forty-four thousand” echoes a reference in the Bible to the book of Revelation, where that number of God’s followers come out of the “great tribulation” and are made “white in the blood of the Lamb” (see Revelation 7:4, 14). I hasten to add that these particular townsfolk were in no way thinking they were the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Although many groups did settle on the plains with the idea that they were in some way fulfilling God’s coming millennium, there is no hint of this in Laura’s writing. Rather, the important reason for men pumping a railcar to Volga in unison was so they could hurry to help get the snowbound train through.

Spirituals of the church served a similar purpose to our praise and worship songs today. There may not be much theology in repeating a chorus such as “Praise the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord, O my soul. Bless his holy name.” But an attitude of gratitude seems to arise from the mere act of repeating the words themselves. And it also occurs to me that the conflict we have in today’s church between those who want to sing only praise songs and those who want to sing only the old hymns is not new. This sort of conflict must have gone on in previous times when some churches focused on singing only the words of the Psalms. Then came a time when reformer Martin Luther broke with that tradition by using all sorts of tunes for sacred purposes.

By today’s standards we might find the tune to “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” a bit stiff and even slow paced, but when Luther penned it, the song was considered revolutionary. Amazingly, this hymn remains in many a hymnal, while you won’t find “Roll the Ole Chariot Along” except here and there in the spirituals section. It seems many praise songs seem to appeal only to the generation that first learned them.

For Laura, a song was a song and that was that; she loved to sing but was not a critic.

Songs for Head and Heart

Some have argued that a person needs praise songs for the heart and hymns for the head in order to be both a feeling and a thoughtful Christian. Surely head and heart Christianity must go together. The songbook Pure Gold doesn’t contain “Roll the Ole Chariot Along,” but it does contain the little tune “Jesus Loves Me,” in which the familiar lyrics state,

Jesus loves me! this I know,

For the Bible tells me so.

This song seems to work for both head and heart and is no less popular now than in days gone by. In fact, most people now think of it as a hymn.

Spiritual meat for the soul in the Little House series comes from the previously mentioned “Rock of Ages,” “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” “Revive Us Again,” and many other Ingalls family favorites. These hymns have substance in their content.

“Rock of Ages,” by Augustus Toplady, pictures God not only as a cleft in the rock where one may hide from danger but also as the purifier of the soul. The water and blood that flowed from Jesus’s side is for sin “the double cure,” saving us from wrath and making us pure. That is, the believer is saved from sin eternally and also in his daily life. Not even one’s own zeal or sorrow for sin can pay the price for wrongdoing. Rather, in the song’s lyrics, “Thou must save, and Thou alone.” God is an active God. Jesus was a sure and active refuge for a pioneering people.

Even in such mystical songs as “Be Still and Know” and “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” God calls us “from a world of care” but also suggests we do have our part to play in our “world of care.” We don’t merely wish for help; we call upon the Father for what we need. Asking is a part of our “labor in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58, NIV).

When Laura and her family prayed for help and protection, they knew they were not escapists but realists dealing with real dilemmas. It is obvious that composer William Walford, in “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” was urging an active participation with those who await the Lord “with strong desires for thy return.” To Walford, and to the pioneers who put their trust in God, to pray itself was a work of faith in which the believer demonstrated his or her obedience by seeking God’s blessing (see Matthew 7:7–8, where the apostles are told to “ask,” “seek,” and “knock” and are promised “it shall be given you,” “ye shall find,” and “it shall be opened unto you”).

This blended attitude of being still and knowing that God is God and that he is also the “rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6) has been a challenge for Christians of every generation. It must be admitted that sometimes our forebears fell into the trap of saying “God helps those who help themselves”—popularized by Ben Franklin—when what they meant was “God helps those who especially need his help.” The truly self-sufficient never think they have that need. This was not a problem for the Ingalls family—they knew when their situation was dire and help was needed.

In The Long Winter, the bad weather of 1880–81 overwhelmed the whole town of De Smet. The trains had stopped running. The Ingallses were burning hay for warmth. The men were desperately hunting antelope and failing. Pa finally went to the Wilder boys, who were “batching it” in town, and bought some of Almanzo’s seed wheat in order to feed the family. Real pioneers knew when they needed others.

Sometimes it is good to remember that the difficulties that face us are not really all that different from one generation to the next. Praise and “rest in God” songs can endure, but hymns often turn out to have more substance and structure if the writer is more content oriented in his or her lyrics.

Isaac Watts, God’s Messenger

One such gifted writer who profoundly influenced Laura and her family was the composer and lyricist Isaac Watts. Though troubled throughout much of his life by mental illness, he wrote over 750 hymns, including this one that Ma Ingalls sings at the end of The Long Winter:

When I can read my title clear

to mansions in the skies,

I’ll bid farewell to every fear,

and wipe my weeping eyes;

and wipe my weeping eyes,

I’ll bid farewell to every fear,

and wipe my weeping eyes….

Let cares, like a wild deluge come,

and storms of sorrow fall!

May I but safely reach my home,

my God, my heaven, my all;

my God, my heaven, my all,

may I but safely reach my home,

my God, my heaven, my all.

The “title clear” of the song refers to the names of believers written in “the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27), and “mansions” refers to John 14:2. Another phrase in this song by Watts refers to “fiery darts,” which is from Ephesians 6:16, and “Satan’s rage” comes from 1 Peter 5:8 and refers to God’s enemy, the devil, “seeking whom he may devour.”

A great part of the pioneer’s perspective on things was in keeping with the sober view that we live in a fallen world, which is seen in the song’s phrase “a frowning world.” Why is it a frowning world? Because of the fall of humankind into sin told of in the book of Genesis, which the pioneers would have been taught about in Sunday school, from the pulpit, and from their own personal experience. Laura’s family, if anything, was very optimistic. You don’t keep trying to settle again and again after setbacks unless you really believe, in the end, that there will be a great future provided by God somewhere. But their positive attitudes still would not have stopped them from singing about “a frowning world.”

The truth is, the family’s experience in Indian Territory had been a disaster—though perhaps Pa should have known better than to settle there. (He settled with an attitude of hope but with no title to the land.) Later, pioneering in Minnesota turned out to be a disaster too. The illness that took little Freddie’s life and the plague of grasshoppers that took their crop—and ultimately the farm—could not have been anticipated, but it would have confirmed what they sang at night around the hearth about “a frowning world.” Ultimately for the Ingallses, true hope in life and in death came from seeking “my home, my God, my heaven, my all,” as Watts had penned.

No, the hymns that sang from Pa’s fiddle were not merely distractions from challenging realities but the very essence of how to live an enduring life. This is a heritage of deepest profundity, and we would be wise to retain of it all that we can. It is the heritage of every American who believes, be they actual descendants of pioneers or not.

Isaac Watts and the Church Militant

Yet where today is the church militant, the church victorious? Certainly, the pioneers embraced that vision and sang of it. From the book Little House in the Big Woods comes a stanza from Isaac Watts’s battle cry “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?”

Am I a soldier of the cross,

A follower of the Lamb,

And shall I fear to own His cause,

Or blush to speak His Name?

How strange these words must sound to those whose hymnals no longer include hymns like “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Although spiritual warfare isn’t won by literal swords (see Ephesians 6:17), it won’t be won by denying there is a battle either. Also, these words are a reminder that Christianity isn’t about swimming with the tide but swimming against it. The reference to blushing at the name of Christ reminds us of the timidity from which we must be delivered if we are to bear his name. Spiritual courage is a necessary virtue for victory.

Of course, we might well wish it otherwise, and Watts painted an almost humorous picture of a sheltered soldier in the stanza quoted in Little House in the Big Woods:

Shall I be carried to the skies,

On flowery beds of ease,

While others fought to win the prize,

And sailed through bloody seas?

One can hardly imagine Laura’s pastor, the Reverend Edward Brown, being someone taking the easy way! Reverend Brown was paid next to nothing by his poor congregation, and if he hadn’t had a little steel in his backbone, he wouldn’t have dragged his family out west. It is significant that he made his own homestead claim. Certainly, there was no flowery bed of ease for him, and he could well identify with what his own parishioners faced.

In Watts’s hymn there is another question:

Are there no foes for me to face?

Must I not stem the flood?

Is this vile world a friend to grace,

To help me on to God?

One can suspect an old settler might have felt that the younger generation had gone soft, with modern hard-won luxuries now being seen as common goods. Mrs. Wilder, for one, had such thoughts. In a Missouri Ruralist column from the 1920s, she wrote, “When tests of character come in later years, strength to the good will not come from the modern improvements [such as “motor cars or radio outfits”]…but from the quiet moments and the ‘still small voices’ of the old home.” Among these voices was the echo of oft-sung hymns that warned that life was more than having ordinary bread and worldly goods.

Isaac Watts and Eternity

The pioneers were looking for more than material success; they desired heavenly success as well. Their faith and conscience told them that the battle was not to the strong but to the enduring. Watts’s hymn continues,

Sure I must fight, if I would reign:

Increase my courage, Lord;

I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain,

Supported by Thy word.

And this the Ingallses did although they didn’t always see the fruits of their efforts, any more than the prophets of the Old Testament did. The epistle to the Hebrews reminds us, “These all died in faith [Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah], not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (11:13).

Perhaps the children of pioneers did, in fact, receive more of a temporal reward than the first pioneers. Certainly, children are always building on the opportunities provided by their parents. Watts made it clear that there remained a heavenly reward for those first settlers who had to be so heavenly minded.

Thy saints in all this glorious war

Shall conquer, though they die;

They see the triumph from afar,

By faith they bring it nigh.

There remains, then, a “rest to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). They have ceased from their labors, and their works do follow them.

When that illustrious day shall rise,

And all Thy armies shine

In robes of victory through the skies,

The glory shall be Thine.

Truly, Watts was a profound inspiration to the Ingalls family but also to pioneers all over the West. His hymns were found in hundreds of denominational and nondenominational hymnals of the day. But his grand influence may have been second on the list of family favorites after another songwriter: Fanny Crosby.

Fanny Crosby, Hymn Writer to the Country

I believe Fanny Crosby was the most influential of any hymn writer to the pioneers. Although Isaac Watts wrote hundreds of hymns, despite terrifying bouts of mental illness, Crosby wrote thousands of hymns, some nine thousand in all, in spite of her blindness. No less than thirty of her hymns are in Pure Gold. The publishers of Pure Gold took a shortcut with the hymn that advises “Cling Closer to Jesus” by simply noting “words by Fannie,” as though everyone ought to know who Fanny is.

Crosby wrote numerous songs for Sunday school, and one of the songs the Ingallses no doubt sang—as they often kept Sunday school at home during times when they weren’t near a church—was “Our Sabbath Home,” which is so characteristic of Fanny’s lyrics. (The tune was by her pastor, Robert Lowry.)

Joyful once again we sing,

In our Sabbath Home;

Praise to God our Saviour King,

In our Sabbath Home.

While before His throne we bend,

While our prayers to Him ascend,

Pleasant is the time we spend,

In our Sabbath Home….

If we truly seek His face,

He will fill this sacred place

With the light of heavenly grace,

In our Sabbath Home.

There are at least two stories in the Little House series that tell of how boring Sunday seemed to be to children. In Little House in the Big Woods, Laura gets rebellious about not being able to run around and play on Sunday. Pa tells her a story of just how strict Sunday used to be when his own father was a boy. Back then, the Sabbath began on Saturday evening after the sun went down, and no food could be prepared at all on the Sabbath. Almanzo had also learned from his experiences that Sunday could be a dreadful day. The Wilders mostly spent the day reading the Bible or sitting until they fell asleep.

One has to wonder if Crosby wrote this chorus as part of an effort to make the solemn day more cheerful. Perhaps words like “Pleasant is the time we spend” were meant to remind fidgety children that active worship could bring good feelings as well as somber ones. “The light of heavenly grace” could fill the home with a kind of sanctity. I believe many people reading Laura’s books do realize there was an essence of goodness that surrounded the Ingalls family as they worshipped God at home as well as at church.

Musicologist Dale Cockrell wrote of Laura’s prairie stories, “Given the books’ subject matter and their extraordinary popularity, one might say without hyperbole that there may be no narratives more responsible for establishing and maintaining the popular mythology of the ‘Great American Family’ than the Little House novels.” To Dr. Cockrell, who has made three CDs of the music the Ingalls family sang, there are “moral and character lessons aplenty,” as demonstrated by their times around Pa’s fiddle and in their choice of songs. (Dr. Cockrell’s work can be found at www.laura-ingalls-wilder.com/index.htm.)

Indeed, in Little Town on the Prairie we find the little family more involved in church and worship than ever as they go to service and Sunday school in the morning and then to afternoon church to finish the day. Hymn 18 in Pure Gold was a favorite of Laura’s. The title is “The Good Old Way,” with lyrics by Fanny Crosby and music by W. H. Doane:

We are going forth with our staff in hand,

Thro’ a desert wild in a stranger land;

But our faith is bright and our hope is strong,

And the Good Old Way is our pilgrim song.

The scriptural reference is to John 14:6, where Jesus says to his disciples that he is “the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” This path is the “Good Old Way” because it was handed down to the Ingallses by their own pioneer ancestors. People going west found it easy to believe they were really on the pathway to a righteous kingdom because they were bringing culture and Christianity to “a desert wild in a stranger land,” just a little farther on than their parents had traveled. Crosby’s song goes on to say, “There are foes without, there are foes within.” No matter; the good old way of holy example taught what they needed to know of morals and of God.

Laura once wrote, “I realize that all my life the teachings of those early [pioneer] days have influenced me, and…[have] been something I have tried to follow, with failures here and there, with rebellion at times; but always coming back to it as the compass needle to the star.”

Merry, Merry Christmas

The reason there are so many Christmas stories in the Little House series is because the theme of Christmas charity was a unifying tradition in the Ingalls family. A centerpiece of each of the eight books in the series is some special celebration of Christmas, which depicts the virtues of giving and sacrifice as being of highest value. And, as always, there was song.

One particularly memorable Christmas is recorded in By the Shores of Silver Lake. Rob and Ella Boast arrive just at Christmastime to beat the rush of settlers who will soon be coming in their wake. Mr. and Mrs. Boast are friends of the Ingalls family and were later described as the closest friends Pa and Ma ever had. Interestingly, not one of the songs mentioned in this episode, except “Jingle Bells,” is one we would likely sing today. The one song sung by the Ingallses and the Boasts that is recorded went,

Merry, merry Christmas everywhere!

Cheerily it ringeth through the air;

Christmas bells, Christmas trees,

Christmas odors on the breeze….

Why should we so joyfully

Sing with grateful mirth?

See! the Sun of Righteousness

Beams upon the earth!

A number of Sunday school books of the period include this song, and it probably was written by a woman in New England who was familiar with the bells and trees of her area. A true Christmas tree was impossible to find on the prairie, and in 1879 there was no town yet for the Boasts and the Ingallses, let alone a church or bells or trees, except for the lone cottonwood by Lake Henry. There weren’t enough gifts for everyone either. The Boasts had not come prepared for Christmas, though Mr. Boast was able to provide the girls with some Christmas candy. Christ was definitely in Christmas back then.

The season was joyful because it celebrated the “Sun of Righteousness,” who came as a child to be born so that his teachings and influence would shed “beams upon the earth.” Even though they had so little, as Laura emphasized in all her Christmas stories, they really had much in God’s gift of his Son. People who don’t expect much at Christmas may be inclined to be less needy by way of material wants.

Interestingly, in the Little House series there is no reference to one of Christmas’s most popular hymns, Watts’s “Joy to the World,” though it was well known at the time. Of course, strictly speaking, Watts’s hymn isn’t a Christmas song but a hymn about Christ’s reign on earth at his second coming. Nevertheless, it was almost immediately adopted as a Christmas song and did appear in the 1878 Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which is what the Ingalls family probably used. The song was also undoubtedly in the Congregational hymnal of Laura’s day. As to how this second-coming song came to be attached to Christmas, no one seems to know.

In any case, two additional songs the Ingallses associated with Christmas adorn By the Shores of Silver Lake: “Mountain of the Lord” and “Gentle Words and Loving Smiles.” “Mountain of the Lord” I referred to earlier, and it appears in the Pure Gold hymnal. It turns out to be another second-coming song used at Christmas to celebrate the first Advent. The Scripture passage it is based on is Isaiah 2:2–3:

And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it….

And he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Here I suspect the phrase “and he will teach us of his ways” is crucial to the meaning of the hymn in that now we have in Jesus Christ the One who will “make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Isaiah 40:3) in the “last days,” as referred to in the text from Isaiah 2.

To the pioneers, their era must have seemed like some kind of fulfillment of prophecy. The Word of the Lord was spreading as they settled a wilderness. A nation that lived according to God’s laws, as they felt America did, was leading the world into an era in which Christ’s reign would finally be made manifest.

The plowman supplants the soldier because Christ has brought peace on earth and goodwill to men. Therefore, the Ingallses must have felt at times that they had a high and holy duty in accomplishing God’s plan for the earth.

Lastly, the words from “Gentle Words and Loving Smiles” by Robert Lowry close out the Silver Lake Christmas:

It is not much the world can give

With all its subtle art;

And gold and gems are not the things

To satisfy the heart;

But Oh, if those who cluster round

The altar and the hearth,

Have gentle words and loving smiles,

How beautiful the earth!

Pa’s fiddle had led them from a theme of fulfilled prophecy to a theme of sacred home life. Happy is the home when God is there. God’s grand vision includes the home: the peace and security of it, the perspectives of it when we cease striving for earthly gold, the happiness of it when we perceive its pleasures as a foretaste of heaven.

It was, indeed, fortunate that Pa’s hopes ultimately centered on a heavenly reward. His earthly efforts, in the end, probably disappointed him. He and Ma and Mary spent their last years in the town of De Smet after Pa moved the family from the farm in 1888, only two years after he “proved up”—served his five years—on his homestead claim in 1886. The homestead itself was apparently sold in 1892. The family then became firmly attached to the little town they’d helped establish but hadn’t planned to live in. No matter how he may have felt about leaving the claim, Pa lived on as one of De Smet’s most distinguished citizens.

Efforts to trace what Pa did for a living in town have proved difficult. Since he had skills as a carpenter, he could have worked in that profession. And there is even a possibility that he may have had a store, for Ma Ingalls is reported to have done supplemental sewing, using material from supplies Pa had on hand when he passed away.

Pa died in 1902 at the age of sixty-six. Part of his obituary reads,

As a citizen he was held in high esteem, being honest and upright in his dealings and associations with his fellows. As a friend and neighbor he was always kind and courteous and as a husband and father he was faithful and loving. And what better can be said of any man? Some few accomplish great things in life’s short span; they control the destinies of nations, or hold in their hand, as it were, the wealth of the world; but the great many tread the common walks of life and to them falls the work of making the world better. He who does this work well is the truly great man. Such was he who has lately been called to the Great Beyond. Charles P. Ingalls did his life’s work well and the world is better for his having lived in it.

Things were never the same for the Ingalls family. Of course, by then Laura had married Almanzo, given birth to Rose, and moved away. She returned from Mansfield to be with her father at his death, and she inherited his fiddle as her only memento of him other than what she carried in her heart.

Hopefully this was comfort enough as she looked back over her life as an Ingalls. Pa’s earthly prosperity had been meager, at best, his heavenly prosperity more real and considerable. Fittingly, Pa’s favorite hymn was sung at his funeral. It was “In the Sweet By and By.”

There’s a land that is fairer than day,

And by faith we can see it afar;

For the Father waits over the way

To prepare us a dwelling place there.

In the sweet by and by

We shall meet on that beautiful shore;

In the sweet by and by

We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

The struggle was over, the pioneer was at rest, the heritage was passed on—a common heritage for us all.