This article contains spoilers for the Netflix series ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and references to racist historical depictions of Indigenous people and African Americans.

Netflix recently released Season 1 of Little House on the Prairie. Seen by many to be a reboot of the NBC TV series (1974-83), today’s series offers a more accurate retelling of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book series.

Although the Little House books are primarily fiction, Wilder drew on her childhood experiences, family stories and historical materials. With her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, working as her editor, Wilder began publishing the series in 1932.

In a 1937 book fair speech, Wilder said: “Every story in this novel, all the circumstances, each incident are true. All I have told is true but it is not the whole truth.”

Committed to recreating Wilder’s fictional world, the Netflix showrunners relied on Wilder’s autobiographical material and additional historical research.

Sources include literary scholar Caroline Fraser’s Pulitzer-prize winning biography Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017) and Osage consultants.

This broader context widens and diversifies Wilder’s fictional world, specifically how she represented the Osage and Dr. George Tann (1835-1909) in her books. Tann, a historical figure, was an African American doctor who practised eclectic medicine in Kansas territory.

Osage language, perspectives

The third novel in the book series (Little House on the Prairie, following Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy) focuses on the Ingalls’ move from Wisconsin to Kansas territory, where, Wilder writes, “there were no settlers.” Seven-year-old Laura, from whose perspective the novels are told, is excited to encounter Indigenous people, repeatedly asking when they will see “Indians.”

As showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine notes,........

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