From the Nebraska Studies.Org web site:
"Most settlers built fires in stoves to heat their houses, but the homesteaders didn't have the same fuel sources they had back east or in Europe. Wood was precious. Coal was expensive. So what did they use?
Ada and her brother Burt McColl collecting "chips" (dried manure) for fuel on the Kansas Prairie near Lakin in 1892. Kansas Historical Society.
As with their building materials, they used what they found at hand. If you lived by a stream, you gather wood. Hay, straw and even sunflower stalks were used. And someone discovered that "chips" - that is, droppings from either cows or buffaloes that had dried in the sun - burned pretty well in the stoves. So, the chips were used for fuel. All you had to do was gather them up. Piles of chips up to 10-12 feet high might be built next to the sod house."
