The Settlers (28 page)

Because of the new country’s demands on the immigrants, capabilities would be developed for which they had had no use in the homeland. They changed America—and America changed them.

—3—

Four of the Swedish-born settlers met early one June morning and walked together through the wilderness. They had set out to choose a place where their community could bury its dead; these four men had accepted the responsibility of selecting the cemetery site for the new congregation.

Once before they had walked in company through the forest. Then they had been seekers of land. They had gone out to choose the ground where they would settle down and live out the rest of their lives. Today they were selecting the ground where they were to be buried.

It was a calm and bright morning; the St. Croix Valley spread out under a clear sky. A heavy dew had nourished the earth during the night—grass, herbs, and leaves were still moist and exuded a fragrance as after rain. To the west the Indian cliff had doffed its night shawl of fog and vapor and turned its brown-gleaming brow toward the eastern morn. The fertile ground was beginning to warm itself in the suns fire. The oppressive summer heat had not yet begun but the earth was already in the cycle of fertility: growth had begun, fresh—green and potent, and the thickets were full and lush. The fields displayed their promise of crops in shoots and stalks, in buds and boughs, in blades and blooms, in grass and growth—in all the clear, shining verdure of the earth.

The four men walked southeast, through a deep valley with thick stands of leaf trees. They passed through groves of red oak and black oak, black and white walnut, elm, and linden trees. They penetrated thickets of raspberries and wild roses, blackberries and sloe-berries—huge, thorny bushes. Here wild plum trees stood in full bloom, here grew black cherries, the biggest of all the cherry trees, their smooth, thick trunks much taller than a man. Round and about the men was all the summer’s wild splendor, soon to bring forth berries and fruit. Today the valley displayed to them its greenery and glitter of blossoming light as if it would bud and bloom and gleam forever.

The men had gone out to select a resting place for the dead, but this June day the earth seemed a paradigm of life eternal.

As they walked silently, facing todays errand, along paths that had been cleared, they were more than ever reminded of the irrevocability of their emigration. In this country they would not only live out their lives, here they would also rest forever. At the time of their emigration they had not thought through to its conclusion: that their graves would be dug far from those of their forefathers. Now as they walked, surveying the ground, they meditated on this final discovery—that their emigration had been not only for this life, but for all eternity.

The forest thickened, the tree crowns rose taller and taller. The men had reached the dense forest. They followed the Indian path which meandered round sand cliffs and over ravines. They crossed streams with water cascading from the rocks. Then they reached an open spot with a few mounds, overgrown with tall grass. The mounds were shaped like overturned bowls, rising in the glade like green-furred, shaggy, evil animals.

These were Indian mounds; under the tangle of weeds the former rulers of this land decayed. The settlers had come upon one of the old burying places of the nomads.

The tillers stopped to inspect the hillocks. At times they had happened to plow too close to a similar mound, and skulls, human bones, and food bowls had been brought to the surface. Then they had hurried to rebury the human remnants and refill the hole. The Indians supplied their dead with food and drink—the ungodly beliefs of the savages penetrated even the earth. White people, born in Christian lands, avoided the graves of the heathens. No Christian settler would wish to lie after his death in earth besmirched by heathendom and idolatry. The cemetery of the new parish must not be placed in the vicinity of these mounds which memorialized a heathen race; bones of Christians and heathens could not rest side by side.

The searchers continued their walk until they reached Ki-Chi-Saga. They followed the shores of the lake in a wide arc round a bay which cut deep into a grove of maple, oak, elm, and walnut trees of lush beauty. Now and then they stopped, exchanged a few words, deliberated. Wasn’t this a suitable piece of ground? The cemetery site must be in beautiful surroundings where survivors would be able to see objects that would minimize their sorrow and invoke comforting thoughts. It would be fine if roses and lilies grew on such ground. It was a consolation when flowers grew on a grave, even before it was dug. The resting place of the dead should also lie on high ground, on a knoll or gentle slope; it must have elevation so that it could be seen. And the rising ground would, as it were, point out the road to Heaven—the road the dead ones had taken before the survivors.

The four men wandered about for hours; they hesitated in a number of places; they discussed the location, examined the soil, speculated on roads to the place, compared one spot with another, deliberated, weighed arguments. But they continued their walk, continued to seek. As yet they had not gone far from the shores of the great lake.

They reached a promontory which cut into Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, and stopped again. The point comprised about five acres. On the lakeside it ended in steep sandstone cliffs to the water. It was heavily wooded with deciduous trees, silver maples predominating. The sugar maple provided the settlers with sugar and syrup and it was a harder wood than the other maples, but the silver maple was more beautiful, friendlier. It was in some way a sociable tree: the settlers preferred the silver maple above all other leaf trees. On this promontory hazel, hawthorn, and walnut also grew in profusion. A level place in the center was overgrown with sumac, cheerful with its red blossoms. The opening with its sumac was like a furnished room in the forests house. And the steep cliffs formed nature’s own protection, fencing in the point with a wall of stone.

The four stayed a long time examining the point. Their conviction grew stronger and stronger. They need seek no farther. They had arrived. This was truly a resting place for human beings.

They sat down in the shade of a wide-spreading silver maple, leaning their backs against the trunk of the tree. It was comfortingly calm in this elevated grove, isolated by the lake on three sides. They looked at the blossoming ground, they squinted toward the sky, out over the water. No heathen graves lay within sight. This was the home of quietude. The June day’s perfection and the absence of wind increased the great stillness of the place. The leaves of the silver maples glistened in the sun, the gentle surf was a faint, peaceful purl against the boulders below the stone wall. This point had already been fenced to the north, south, and west by the lake, fenced by the Creator himself when on the third day he separated land and water.

The four men listened to the soft wind and to the purling water; here sitting under the silver maples people could enjoy a momentary rest, and later that longer repose which at last would succeed this earthly life. This was a resting place for both the living and the dead.

The men held a short deliberation, after which they agreed that they would advise the new parish to have the ground on this beautiful point near Ki-Chi-Saga consecrated as a burying place for their dead.

Once the men had chosen their last resting place they sat for a long while, preoccupied. Within themselves each posed a question. It was a question that could not be answered by what they could hear or see, it could not be answered by any human being—it arose and made itself felt of its own volition who would be the first to lie in his grave here on this point? Who would be first to rest under the silver maples?

Would it be a man or a woman, a child or an adult, young or old? The shareholders in this, the burial plot they had selected, were mostly people in their youth or blooming prime, but none among them had any promise of the morrow. Life in this country offered so little security and so many dangers that only a few could hope to die in bed, full of years.

Perhaps one of them, one of the four who today rested in the future parish cemetery, might be the first to lie under the silver maples.

Four human beings sat at the site of their last destination in life’s journey. Wherever their steps led them in this world, here their wandering would finally cease. However much they strove, whatever they undertook—they would eventually be carried to this plot of ground on the lakeshore. During their wandering today they had been reminded anew of the old truth, the truth they had learned from those who had gone before them, the truth they felt shudderingly, deep in their soul: they were of the earth and inexorably chained to the earth. The four men resting in the shade of the silver maples belonged to the turf under their feet. And today they had searched out their own turf of death.

And now having finished their search in the forest and having taken their rest, the seekers rose and returned to the life which still remained to them.

XI

THE LETTER TO SWEDEN

New Duvemåla at Taylors Falls Post

Office in Minnesota, North America,

Christmas Day, 1854.

Dearly Beloved Parents,

Hope you are Well is my Daily Wish.

I want to write to let you know that various things are well with us. We have health and since I last wrote nothing of weight has happened to us.

Last October we moved into our new Main House which has two storys. It is built of timbers which I have rough hewn by hand on both sides. In this building we have plenty of room, it is warm also and lacks nothing.

Concerning my situation in North America it is improving right along. I have this fall paid for my whole land at the landoffis, 200 hundred dollar for 160 acres. I have broken new land three times as large as Korpamoen and fensed in about 300 yards, one yard equals 3 Swedish feet. I have four cows in the stable and 3 young livestock in pens. I have cut a pair of Bull Calfs which I raise for oxes. In America no one reaches Comfort in one day but we are satisfied with our improvement.

We have now built up a school house in our Parish. Johan and Marta go to school and learn various subjects from Books, English also. We pay for a pastor in our Parish with 65 dollar a year and free fire wood. Sometimes he travels to other Settlements and Preaches. Here is much disagreement in Religion. But the Pastor can not exclude anyone from the Parish or from the Sacrament, but two thirds of the parishioners can fire the pastor from his job.

We shall this winter select a Swedish justice of the Peace among us. But there is not much Authority here and I like that well. Here in America the Officials are appointed as servants to attend to their duties. When they do not attend to their job other Officials are put in their place. It is not like in Sweden. They have a perverted Government at home. Sweden has too many lazy dogs to feed who do not wish to work.

I think it is sad for you to sit alone. Is it cold in your room in winter? Have you enough wood for fires—I wish I could send you some of the wood we have here in abundance.

I got apple seeds from Duvemåla which I planted and a sapling has grown up but it will take time I reckon before the tree has fruit. Around the new house Kristina made a flower bed and I have planted 5 Cherrys and 12 Goosberrys and wine berries and some places for strawberries which will bear next summer.

It is Christmas Day today and I have taken the whole day off to write to Sweden. I remember the Christmas games at home, but the joyful and happy mind of a youth is no longer mine; it is hard to claim wild land and I feel it in the Body although not yet Old. I do not hop about on my feet as lightly as in my youth.

It would be a Joy to come home to you once more in Life and sit down at the old table and cut slices of the Christmas Pig, like in my childhood days.

Many days have now passed since I offered you my hand in farewell and left a dear Childhood home. I apologize if I have been slow in writing and write so seldom. I am thinking every day I must write but always delay.

Immeasurable Seas separate us but Daily I have my dear Parents in my thoughts, and my letters to Sweden shall not cease.

You are greeted heartily from your relations in a far-off land. Greetings also to my dear sister Lydia and ask her to write to her brother in North America, if Fathers Hands do tremble.

Your devoted Son

Karl Oskar Nilsson.

Part Two

Gold and Water

XII

THE MARCH OF THE HUNDRED THOUSAND

If it be romance, if it be contrast,
if it be heroism that we require,
what was Troy town to this?

—Robert Louis Stevenson
Across the Plains

About the middle of the nineteenth century, an immense river of human beings pushed its way across North America, from the east toward the west. It was formed in the springtime, from smaller streams and rivulets, at the frontier outposts in Missouri and Kansas and from there streamed over wild and unknown country, across great deserts and salt marshes, over the prairies’ grass and the Rocky Mountains’ snow, over flat land and high mesas, uphill, downhill. Its path—two thousand miles long—was called the California Trail—but the name was all that existed; it had been given to a trail that was yet to be defined and mapped.

Over a path that was everywhere and nowhere, the March of the Hundred Thousand pushed on, from spring to autumn. Its goal was the furthermost western country, washed by an ocean greater than the one crossed by the millions of immigrants.

This train was made up of the strangest conglomeration of people that had ever traveled two thousand unknown, uncleared miles together. It was a caravan never before seen, and never to be seen again.

Men and women, married and unmarried; babes in cradles strung inside the covered ox wagons; old people with trembling limbs. There were proud, honorable women in homespun wadmal, harlots in silk and frills. There were religious people, and atheists. Pious and upright men and women, noble and high-minded people, murderers and robbers, degraded criminals of both sexes. Puritans and libertines, celibates and rapists, the young girl with her virginity intact and the whore who opened her arms to a thousand men. There were thieves and card sharks, counterfeiters and practitioners of every vice known to the world. There were farm hands and maids who had fled from service, soldiers from their regiments, prisoners from their jails, seamen from their ships, mental patients from their asylums, men who had run away from their wives and wives from their husbands, children from their parents, and officials from their posts and positions. There were truthful people and liars, bright people and simpletons, people with normal minds and people a little off. The healthy people and the sick, giants and dwarfs, well-shaped and deformed; one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed, limping ones, seeing and half-blind; all these God-created creatures could be found in this train, in the train of the hundred thousand.