January 12, 1888 was a date that lived in infamy for
many settlers that lived in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska. On that date they awoke to an abnormally warm
winter day. After many days of bitter
cold, this seemed like the perfect day to do outdoor chores and attend
school. What they didn’t know was that a
cold artic wind was blowing down from Canada that would drop the temperature as
much as 70 to 80 degrees in some areas to forty below zero. This came along with an ice driven blizzard
and it arrived just when many of these children were walking home after school
on the open prairie.
The Children’s Blizzard tells the personal tales of
the immigrants who moved to the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska area and
their brutal voyages overseas. It also
talks about the early days of the weather service. Then the book tells the personal stories of
many people on January 12th, 1888, and follows the aftermath.
The immigration stories following two main groups on
their way from Norway and from the Ukraine were fascinating. It made me realize how lucky I am that my own
ancestors survived the journey over as even during the latter half of the
nineteenth century, it was still common for 10% of immigrants to die on the
boats over.
I didn’t realize there was a weather prediction
service in the 1880s, so reading about how it worked was fascinating to me.
Although I think it’s a little harsh to totally blame the weather service. In that day even if they would have gotten
their warnings out via telegraph and hosted the cold wave flags, most of the
people affected by the storms did not live close enough to see the flags and
with no phones or means of communication, it’s hard to think it would have made
a difference.
The varying personal stories of the day of the
blizzard haunted me. After I read the
story of poor school boy Walter, I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day . .
. and Walter has been dead for a long time!
There were so many tales of bravery, sacrifice, and just plain
sadness. It was nice that these real
people are still remembered.
I also enjoyed that one of my favorite books, The Long
Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder was discussed.
The Long Winter was not the winter of 1888, but 1880 and Larkin verifies
that Wilder captures what others experienced that winter in vivid prose. Her descriptions describe what many others
recorded in their journals and diaries in the winter of 1880. “Laura Ingalls Wilder made the Snow Winter
the subject of her novel The Long Winter.
Every detail in the book matches up exactly with the memoirs of the
pioneers: the grinding of wheat in coffee mills, the endless hours of twisting
prairie hay for fuel, the eerie gray twilight of the snowed-in houses, the
agony of waiting and hoping that the trains would get through, the steady creep
of starvation when they failed to yet again.”
I enjoyed the style of writing this non-fiction
book. I cared for the real characters
and their stories felt alive. It was a
book that I have been telling everyone about and that I will think about long
after I’ve read it. The only negative I
had about this book is that there were so many characters to follow, I
sometimes got lost in the details. And I
like big and complicated books! I think
maybe having a section at the beginning like some novels do with a list of the
real people in the book and how they are related would have been helpful.
Favorite Quotes:
“On January 12, 1888, a blizzard broke over the center
of the North American continent. Out of
nowhere, a soot gray cloud appeared over the northwest horizon. The air grew still for a long, eerie measure,
then the sky began to roar and a wall of ice dust blasted the prairie. Every crevice, every gap and orifice
instantly filled with shattered crystals, blinding, smothering, suffocating,
burying anything exposed to the wind.” -
Opening Lines
“Chance is always a silent partner in disaster.”
“God inflicted ten plagues on the Egyptians to punish
them for refusing to free the Israelites, but with the settlers of the North
American prairie He limited himself to three:
fire grasshoppers, and weather.”
“Out on the frontier, working children made the
difference between surviving and going under.”
“I am tired of talk that that comes to nothing . . ..
You might as well expect the rivers to run backwards as that any man who was
born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go
where he pleases.” - Chief Joseph at his
surrender.
“Under the banners of civilization and Christianity
there have been committed wrongs against the Indian that must cause the most
hardened man to blush with shame, “wrote Woodroof in 1881
“It’s time for us to acknowledge of American’s greatest
mistakes,” wrote Nicholas D. Kristof on the op-ed page of the New York Times, “a
140-year-old scheme that has failed at a cost of trillions of dollars,
countless lies and immeasurable heartbreak:
the settlement of the Great Plains.” – very controversial. It’s an interesting topic to debate.
Overall, The Children’s Blizzards is a fascinating
look into a heartbreaking chapter of our nation’s history.
Book Source: I purchased this book somewhere in South
Dakota last summer on our family vacation to the Black Hills and Laura Ingalls
Wilder stop of De Smet.
I read this book last year and found it fascinating. (Probably because of that Laura Ingalls Wilder connection.) :D
ReplyDeleteI'm glad it wasn't just me . . . although I think I've convinced a few people they should read it. It's also so fascinating for me to discover just how true Little House was after it being told they were historical fiction.
DeleteLaura, this does sound like a fascinating book! Your suggestion is a good one, I think. It sounds like it would be a helpful addition. As always, I enjoyed reading the quotations you included from the book.
ReplyDeleteThanks - I know it would have helped me a lot!
DeleteSerendipity here! I just finished reading the novel "Winter Sisters" by Robin Oliveira which uses a combination of this blizzard and the January 1888 blizzard in the northeast (both moved back to 1879) as the basis for a very not nice thing happening to a couple of young girls.
ReplyDeleteI just added Winter Sisters to my to read list - it sounds fascinating. Thanks for the suggestion!
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