Caddie Woodlawn

To Gram
whose tales of her childhood in Wisconsin
gave a lonely little girl many happy hours

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandScuter.com

Text copyright 1935 by Macmillan Publishing Company

Text copyright renewed 1963 by Carol Ryrie Brink

Illustrations copyright © 1973 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Also available in a Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.

First Aladdin Paperbacks edition 1990

This Aladdin Paperbacks edition May 2007

eISBN: 978-1-4424-6858-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brink, Carol Ryrie, 1895-1981

Caddie Woodlawn / Carol Ryrie Brink; illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.

p. cm.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Macmillian, 1935.

Summary: The adventures of an eleven-year-old tomboy growing up on the Wisconsin frontier in the mid-nineteenth century.

ISBN-13: 978-0-02-713670-8 (hc)

ISBN-10: 0-02-713670-1 (hc)

[ I. Frontier and pioneer life—Wisconsin—Fiction.] I. Hyman, Trina Schart, ill. II.Title.

PZ7.B78Cad 1990

[Fic]—dc20 89-18357 CIP AC

ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-4818-6 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 1-4169-4818-X (pbk)

Twelve miles south of Menomonie, Wisconsin, there is a pretty wayside park named in honor of Caddie Woodlawn. In it you may picnic or rest or enter a small gray house and see exactly where Caddie and Tom and Warren once lived. You may follow a trail out to Chimney Bluffs or go to the river where the Little Steamer used to dock in the days when the river was higher and when Dunnville was a promising town. Now the town has almost disappeared. While Caddie and Tom and Warren were living there, they would have been much surprised to learn that a hundred years later thousands of visitors from thirty-seven states and six foreign countries would sign the guest
book in the Caddie Woodlawn house in one year. They would not have believed a word of it.

Caddie Woodlawn was my grandmother. Her real name was Caddie Woodhouse. All of the names in the book, except one, are changed a little bit. The names are partly true, partly made up, just as the facts of the book are mainly true but have sometimes been slightly changed to make them fit better into the story. The one name that remains unchanged is that of Robert Ireton. I liked the name and I thought that, since hired men often moved from place to place for seasonal work, no one was likely to remember him. But even Robert is remembered today in this part of Wisconsin, and you may go to visit his grave.

There was a strong bond of love between my grandmother and me. As soon as I could walk I used to run away to see her. She was fun to be with and she always had something interesting to tell me. By the time I was eight I had lost both of my parents, and I went to live with my grandmother and an unmarried aunt. I had no brothers or sisters. Gram and Aunt and I were the family, and we lived in northern Idaho in an old-fashioned house on a big town lot. It was almost like a tiny farm with a barn for my pony and room for dogs, cats, chickens and canary birds. There were many different kinds of fruit trees, and in cherry season
I used to climb up to a comfortable branch and sit reading a book and eating cherries. I was happy, but I was often lonely and I learned to amuse myself by reading, drawing, writing, and telling myself long, continued stories. The storytelling came naturally, because Gram and Aunt had told me so many stories that I thought I knew just how the best ones ought to go. I particularly loved to hear about Gram's pioneer childhood in Wisconsin. Being an only child made me want especially to hear about her many brothers and sisters who lived together in such good nature and love. The only one of them that I ever saw was Hetty. I knew her as Great-aunt Ett, and I used to look forward to her visits with us. Then the stories flew thick and fast, and I sat spellbound, listening, listening!

It was many years later that I remembered these stories of Caddie's childhood, and I said to myself, “If I loved them so much, perhaps other children would like them, too.” Caddie was still alive while I was writing, and I sent many letters to her, asking about the details that I did not remember clearly. She was pleased when the book was done. “There is only one thing that I do not understand,” she said. “You never knew my mother and father and my brothers—how could you write about them exactly as they were?”

“But, Gram,” I said, “you told me.”

After the book was published, schoolchildren used to come to see her on her birthday and sing for her or give her little presents. This pleased her very much. She lived to be almost eighty-six years of age. Like a true pioneer she had come all across the country from Boston to Wisconsin to Idaho to the Pacific Ocean. She had many troubles in her life, but she always looked out cheerfully at the world and found it a good place. She noticed people and the interesting things that happened to them, and she found these things worth retelling.

For myself and two younger cousins, Gram represented kindness and good sense, justice tempered by humor, and love and security. After her death we had a line from the Bible carved on her gravestone: “Her candle goeth not out by night.”

C
AROL
R
YRIE
B
RINK

February 6, 1973

Author's Note

1.
Three Adventurers

2.
The Circuit Rider

3.
Pigeons in the Sky

4.
A Silver Dollar

5.
Nero, Farewell!

6.
A Schoolroom Battle

7.
Attic Magic

8.
Breeches and Clogs

9.
“The Rose Is Red”

10.
Hoofs in the Dark

11.
Massacree!

12.
Ambassador to the Enemy

13.
Scalp Belt

14.
A Dollars Worth

15.
“Fol de Rol-lol”