Absolutely. Honestly, they should have called DeSmet "Idiotville" with the way most of the town acted in that book. The Ingalls fit right in there.
What drove me crazy about Pa moving from the Big Woods is that he didn't do it for any other reason than his feeling that the woods were getting "too crowded". Yeah, dude, just take your wife and your three girls who were under the age of seven and go wandering around to Kansas to a place where you heard that the government would probably let people settle in at some point in time. It's lucky they didn't die of malaria or anything else while there.