Spend any length of time doing editing work, and you’ll soon conclude that most material excised from a book is cut for good reason. But sometimes, scenes deleted because they didn’t fit a book’s theme or mood make for fascinating tales in their own right.
Every self-respecting bibliophile should be aware of author Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her series of Little House on the Prairie books chronicling American frontier life has entertained generations of children. Though not lacking pathos and even thrills, few would describe Wilder’s work as dark. Which is why she left one noteworthy personal story out of Little House.
There was the story of the Bender family that belonged in the third volume, Little House on the Prairie. The Benders lived halfway between it and Independence, Kansas. We stopped there, on our way in to the Little House, while Pa watered the horses and brought us all a drink from the well near the door of the house. I saw Kate Bender standing in the doorway. We did not go in because we could not afford to stop at a tavern.
On his trip to Independence to sell his furs, Pa stopped again for water, but did not go in for the same reason as before.
There were Kate Bender and two men, her brothers, in the family and their tavern was the only place for travelers to stop on the road south from Independence.
Wilder’s account of that trip reads like many of her other tales of frontier life–unless the reader is familiar with who the Benders were.
People disappeared on that road. Leaving Independence and going south they were never heard of again. It was thought they were killed by Indians but no bodies were ever found.
Spoiler: It wasn’t Indians.
It is conjectured that when a guest would stay at the Benders’ bed and breakfast inn, the hosts would give the guest a seat of honor at the table which was positioned over a trap door that led into the cellar. With the victim’s back to the curtain Kate would distract the guest, while John Bender or his son would come from behind the curtain and strike the guest on the right side of the skull with a hammer. The victim’s throat was cut by one of the women to ensure death. The body was then dropped through the trap door. Once in the cellar, the body would be stripped and later buried somewhere on the property, often in the orchard. Although some of the victims had been quite wealthy, others had been carrying little of value on them, and it was surmised that the Benders had killed them simply for the sheer thrill.
That’s right. Little House on the Prairie almost included Laura Ingalls Wilder’s brush with America’s first family of serial killers.
Then it was noticed that the Benders’ garden was always freshly plowed but never planted. People wondered. And then a man came from the east looking for his brother, who was missing.
That man being Colonel Alexander M. York, Civil War hero, attorney, and crusading state senator.
A grave was partly dug in the garden with a shovel close by. The posse searched the garden and dug up human bones and bodies. One body was that of a little girl who had been buried alive with her murdered parents. The garden was truly a grave-yard kept plowed so it would show no signs. The night of the day the bodies were found a neighbor rode up to our house and talked earnestly with Pa. Pa took his rifle down from its place over the door and said to Ma, “The vigilantes are called out.” Then he saddled a horse and rode away with the neighbor. It was late the next day when he came back and he never told us where he had been. For several years there was more or less a hunt for the Benders and reports that they had been seen here or there. At such times Pa always said in a strange tone of finality, “They will never be found.” They were never found and later I formed my own conclusions why.
In case you’re wondering, other researchers have compiled theories to fill in the blanks.
Many stories say that one vigilante group actually caught the Benders and shot all of them but Kate, whom they burned alive.
Why would the posse shoot John Sr. and Jr. and the old lady but single Kate out for burning at the stake, you ask?
A self-proclaimed healer and psychic, she distributed flyers advertising her supernatural powers and her ability to cure illnesses. She also conducted séances and gave lectures on spiritualism, for which she gained notoriety for advocating free love.
That sounds eerily familiar …
“Kate proclaimed herself responsible to no one save herself.” She professed to be a medium of spiritualism, and delivered lectures on that subject. In her lectures she publicly declared that murder might be a dictation for good; that in what the world might deem villainy, her soul might read bravery, nobility, and humanity. She advocated “free love,” and denounced all social regulations for the promotion of purity and the prevention of carnality, which she called “miserable requirements of self-constituted society.” She maintained carnal relations with her brother, and boldly proclaimed her right to do so, in the following words found in her lecture manuscript: “Shall we confine ourselves to a single love, and deny our natures their proper sway?…Even though it be a brother’s passion for his own sister, I say it should not be smothered.”
You are not at the wrong web address. That is not a post from your ex-hippie aunt’s Facebook page. It is from 1873.
Let’s go down the Death Cult hit list:
- Spiritual, not religious
- Coomerism
- Don’t need no man!
- Murder
- Social constructs
- Love is love!
- and, oh yeah …
Truly nothing new under the sun. The Death Cult’s lies go back to the Garden of Eden.
Thus, there’s appreciable symmetry in the vigilantes applying the Biblical remedy for witches.
Back to Mrs. Wilder:
You will agree it is not a fit story for a children’s book. But it shows there were other dangers on the frontier besides wild Indians.
And those other dangers turned out to be worse. Looking back at the wreck of America, it’s clear the witches succeeded where the Indians failed.
