Laura Ingalls Wilder A Pioneer's Life

Pioneer Life In the 1800s, pioneers streamed westward. To make way for them, in many cases, the U. S. Army pushed Native Americans from their homelands. The pioneers cleared the forests and plowed up the tough sod, or grass roots, that covered the prairie so they could grow crops. Pioneers had to build, grow, knit, sew, and cook almost everything they needed in order to live. The Prairie and the Big Woods Laura Ingalls was born on February 7, 1867, in the woods of Pepin, Wisconsin. When Laura was just two years old, Ma and Pa Ingalls packed all their belongings into a covered wagon and headed toward Independence, Kansas. It was the first of many moves the Ingalls family would make during Laura's childhood. They were pioneers, some of the first non-Native Americans in the American West.