Before the story begins, DeFelice writes, “THE STATE OF OHIO, 1839” (1), and the time and place allude to the historical context. Pa explains, “We didn’t think much about the Shawnees and how they got pushed out to make room for us. It was just the way of things” (79). The “way of things” indicates the brutal, lethal policies that the United States and prior colonizers enacted against Indigenous tribes like the Shawnees. As the historian Howard Zinn details in his canonized account of America, A People’s History of the United States (1980), the violence against the Indigenous people began immediately. Christopher Columbus treated them inhumanely, as did the settlers who became part of the burgeoning United States. Assaulting and killing the Indigenous people was official American policy. Before he became the first president of the United States, the Seneca tribe chief Half-King gave George Washington the nickname “town destroyer” due to his ruthless assaults. Like many other people in real life, Pa accepted the destructive “way of things.”

The story mentions two specific historical figures and one key law. The historical figures are Daniel Boone and Andrew Jackson, and the law is the Indian Removal Act.