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What was a child's life like in the days of the Old West? Little House On The Prairie suggests obedient, sheltered children with clean pinafores and loving parents. Caddie Woodlawn had more freedom, a less decorous existence with the possibility of adventure at every turn. And when we leave fiction, works like the biography of Anne Sullivan provide a glimpse of the nightmarish existence of children left without the protection of family. A child in Maddock might live any of these lives.
    Childhood could be dangerous. Child abuse was not yet a crime, and child labor laws were not yet in effect. Children might be required to work long hours at dangerous jobs. Orphans that found themselves in orphanages were lucky; if a child alone had a home at all, it would more likely be in an almshouse or workhouse, living side by side with tubercular patients or the adult insane.
    And childhood could be a time of hard work, with frontier children often essential to the family economy. From a very early age, children of both sexes might be responsible for tasks ranging from plowing to hunting, from planting potatoes to herding cattle. Many went further afield to raise cash any way they could - sifting mining-town saloon sweepings for gold dust, taking their own herds of fowl or goats to market, selling edible weeds to miners hungry for fresh food.
    These children were extraordinarily independent, working far from parental supervision. In their free mixing with adults of all kinds, they were exposed to influences that shocked Eastern visitors. Children in unhappy homes sometimes took this freedom to the logical extreme of running away. In the labor-starved West, they often had little difficulty finding homes and jobs with no questions asked.
    Ages? Well, a diary says that two-year-old "little Baz...goes on errands down to his grand ma's". Children of seven or eight took their rifles on overnight hunting trips. At ten, one boy was clerking at the local store; a year later, he was taking a wagon to other towns on buying trips. By thirteen or fourteen, a boy might have a "man's job" - running a telegraph, driving a stage or ferry. Girls, on the other hand, often lost their freedom as they approached adulthood, expected to retreat to the home and take up cooking, sewing, and preparation for marriage, after years of running wild in the fields, prairies, and towns.
    Children's lives were not all work, of course. They attended school, though often only for the few winter months when they could be spared from farm tasks. They participated in the same dances, lectures, debates, and revival meetings as their elders. They played games, explored the countryside, and read whatever books and magazines they could get their hands on. They tagged along after exciting adult personages like miners, gamblers, and sporting women. And they were not immune from their elders' vices - children, as well as adults, often gambled, and a child drinking and smoking was certainly not unheard of.