The Settlers (60 page)

Frank was now two years old, and as yet there had been no signs of a new life beginning. It was her strongest wish that he might remain the youngest. Kristina feared she could not survive one more childbed.

—2—

Scarcely had their church been built when they lost their minister. Before Pastor Törner left he promised to find a replacement for the Swedish parish in St. Croix among the Lutheran synod of Chicago. But there was a dearth of Swedish ministers in America; few churchmen wanted to exchange their comfortable lives in Sweden for the dangers and privations of Minnesota. And there were those ministers who felt that these ungrateful people who had left their homeland were lost to God anyway and condemned to eternal damnation.

Meanwhile the emigrants at Chisago Lake must get along with visiting pastors from other parishes in the Northwest, and even though these came at frequent intervals there were many Sundays without a service.

One evening Karl Oskar came home from a parish meeting with sad news about their schoolmaster. Pastor Cederlöf, the Lutheran minister at Red Wing in Goodhue County, who had preached last Sunday and remained for the parish meeting, had told the members something greatly disturbing. In Mr. Johnson, their schoolmaster, he had recognized a false priest, Timoteus Brown, who had long traveled about in the Swedish settlements and—according to momentary suitability—pretended to be a Lutheran, a Baptist, a Methodist, or a Seventh-Day Adventist. Even the name Brown was false; the man’s real name was Magnus Englund, a drunken student from Uppsala, sent by his parents to the New World to cure his drunkenness. Once it had become known that he was a self-made minister he had given up preaching and taken to teaching school. As a teacher he was probably less dangerous. Pastor Cederlöf had not told England that he had been discovered, but he wanted to warn the parish council that their teacher was a wolf in sheep’s clothing; the Swedish paper had long ago published warnings about him.

Consequently, said Karl Oskar, the parish council had today sent for the schoolmaster to examine him, but that bird had already been warned and had flown from his nest at the school building. Someone had seen him board the steamboat in Stillwater.

The Swedish student Englund-Brown-Johnson, who for some time had given good instruction to the settler children, had disappeared and was never again heard of in the St. Croix Valley. So the new parish was for the time being without either minister or teacher.

Several weeks might sometimes elapse without a service in the new church, and Kristina stayed home even on Sundays. Then would come a Sunday with a new minister, always a new and unknown pastor, in the pulpit. It wasn’t as it had been earlier. To her, the services in the new country had been linked with the churchman who had given her the Sacrament in America for the first time and who had turned their old log house into a temple. Without Pastor Törner before the altar or in the pulpit, the church did not seem the same God’s house to her.

And Kristina had not yet heard church bells ring in America. An empty and silent steeple rose from their church in the oak grove at the lake, and no organ played inside. Their temple stood there mute, mum, and silent, as if not daring to voice a sound before the Lord. Each time she looked up at the empty steeple she thought: Like the bells at home, here too the peal from on high would have inspired reverence in the congregation; the Lord’s own voice from above would have opened the hearts of people before they entered his temple.

One Sunday it was announced that a well-known minister from faraway Chicago would conduct services in the new church. But when Kristina left her bed that morning she told Karl Oskar that he would have to go to church alone; she did not feel quite well today.

What was the matter with her? She couldn’t tell definitely, and he wondered. Was she lying to him about her sickness, he asked himself. He hardly remembered a single instance during their marriage when he had caught his wife lying.

During the night Kristina had dreamed that she had borne a child. It had been a very short dream but much had happened in it. She had been sitting in their new church and suddenly felt she was pregnant. She remembered it was her eighth time. The child in her womb felt well developed and she could not understand why she hadn’t felt her pregnancy before. When at the end of the service she was leaving the church, labor had overtaken her and she had borne the child on the steps outside, in view of all the worshipers. The child dropped naked on the top step and wailed loudly. At that moment Samuel Nöjd, the heathen fur trapper, whom she had never seen in church before, approached her with an evil grin. He picked up the child and ran away with it, carrying it by the legs, head down, as he would handle a dead rabbit. Then she herself had cried out, she tried to run after the kidnapper but was unable to do so and fell headlong down the church steps. On the top step she could see a big red mark: her own blood.

At the sight of this she had awakened. Her shift was drenched through with cold sweat, but a joyous relief filled her: only in her dream had she been pregnant. But today she was unable to mount the steps where she had experienced her birth dream.

Kristina had never believed that dreams came true or were a premonition. But the birth on the church steps had shaken her more deeply than any dream she could remember. What could it mean? She knew at least why she had dreamed this particular dream; two months in succession her bleeding had been delayed a whole week beyond the expected day. Twice in a row she had suffered a week of anxiety, waiting for her body to give the sign which meant comfort and peace for another month. And when the sign at last appeared she felt wild with joy for a few days. Fear of a new pregnancy had disturbed her sleep so that in a dream she had experienced what she feared. That must be it. That the repulsive heathen and whoring man Nöjd stole her child added to the horror of the dream.

For years now she had carried within her the fervent wish that God would make her barren for the rest of her life. But she had not dared voice her desire and pray to him to grant it. She had often wondered about this: a woman who refused the blessing of fertility and prayed for the curse of barrenness—didn’t she sin against God’s commandments?

In her fear of a new pregnancy, increased by the dream birth on the church steps, the old temptation returned to her. She thought it over, hesitated, doubted. She decided to ask the advice of Danjel Andreasson, and the next time she saw her uncle alone, she asked, “Would I commit a grave sin if I prayed God to relieve me of further childbirths?”

Danjel was accustomed to his niece talking intimately to him in matters she would not even mention to Karl Oskar, and he was not surprised at her question. He replied that the Almighty could see into the hearts of all his creatures. He knew all her thoughts, wishes, and desires. If she wanted to be relieved of bearing any more children, then this wish must already be known to God. And it was assuredly permitted for each person to pray according to his understanding; if she were praying for something that was good for her, then the Lord would grant her prayer, otherwise not.

Kristina interpreted her uncle’s opinion to mean that a woman’s prayer for barrenness was not a sin against any of God’s commandments. Of course Danjel was only a poor sinner himself and could not with assurance tell her when she sinned and when she didn’t. But if she transgressed with this prayer, then she must already have committed the sin in her heart. Wasn’t she courageous enough to do in word what she already had done in thought?

In every need a person must turn to his creator, every worry, great or small, must be carried to him. God demanded simply that a worried person turn to him, ask his aid.

And now she was a worried and deeply frightened person. Why did she hesitate? Why did she delay? Why hadn’t she been bold enough to offer this prayer long ago? But now she would do so.

Not at the same time as her evening prayer, however, which she read every night in bed before going to sleep. Not so much because Karl Oskar would lie awake in his bed across the room and listen, but mostly because this was a prayer of great importance to her. This urgent prayer must be said secretly, alone, with no one looking on. She wanted to feel entirely alone with the Almighty. And if she sought out a lonely place for the prayer, then he must understand how important it was to her, how fervently she sought its granting.

And this prayer would always remain a secret between the creator and her.

On a light, balmy July evening Kristina stole up the hill to a grove of immense oaks a few gunshots’ distance from the house. She had been careful to see that no one noticed her leave; she sneaked away like someone on a forbidden errand. God saw her, and he would listen, but no one else must see or hear her. She felt she was on her way to a sacred meeting—which she was. Tonight she was meeting God in his own beautifully created oak grove.

Below a mighty oak she fell down on her knees to offer her secret prayer.

Her knees in the lush grass, her forehead against the oak trunk, Kristina prayed to him who had all power in heaven and on earth. She prayed for that which was good for her. A seven-times blessed woman prayed for barrenness for the rest of her life; she prayed the Lord to have mercy on her tired, worn-out body, and not create any more lives in it.

“Dear, dear God! Don’t let me become pregnant again! I am unable to endure it! Think of me, dear God!”

The tall oak crowns swayed above her head. The wind, rustling in their leaves, was the only sound in the grove up here tonight. The silence and the stillness aided in making her feel alone—alone with God. The soft wind she heard in the crowns of the trees she took as a touch of the creator’s own soft hand, as a breath of confidence from the heaven above her; the father in heaven touched his praying child.

After the prayer a great calm came over her. When she rose from her bent knees, she felt sure her prayer had been heard.

XXXII

PARTNERS OF AMERICA

—1—

On May 11, 1858, a new star shone on the flag of the United States of America. On this day the Congress admitted a new state, the thirty-second, into the union. The state was Minnesota.

But a great distance separated Washington from Minnesota and it was two whole days before the 150,000 inhabitants of the far-away territory learned that they now lived in a state of the Union. On the beautiful May day, when the decision was made, the settlers were busy with the spring planting of their fields, unaware of the transformation of their status: in the morning they went to work as territorial residents, in the evening they returned as citizens of the greatest and mightiest republic in the world.

Up till now the Minnesota settlers had felt that the government in Washington was their guardian: the representatives they had sent to Congress had no voting rights. Washington had appointed their governors, made up their budget, and generally supervised their activities. This had made the people feel that they weren’t trustworthy. And they had waited a long time: Congress had more than once denied the territory state rights. The southern slave states would not admit Minnesota unless Kansas too were admitted. But since the Kansas constitution permitted slavery it was not acceptable to the Northern states. However, after many bitter debates in Congress, both territories had now at last been admitted.

As soon as the decision was made in Washington, the great news was dispatched by telegram to the Minnesota legislature. But the telegraph wires reached only as far as Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and from there the telegram had to be carried by steamer up the Mississippi. On the morning of May 13, when the new state already was two days old, the steamer arrived in St. Paul. There the papers spread the happy message with the biggest headlines ever seen in the territory: GLORIOUS NEWS! MINNESOTA A STATE! BRING OUT THE BIG GUN! And half the front page of the
St. Paul Pioneer
depicted a cannon being fired under a flag with thirty-two stars. BRING OUT THE BIG GUN! The letters above the cannon were so large the readers could almost hear the firing.

Fort Snelling at St. Paul fired all its guns, with the consequence that people who hadn’t yet heard the news thought the Indians were on the warpath and began to leave their homes in panic. But as soon as the word spread, each owner of a firing iron added to the noise and celebration. Every settler with a gun fired a shot of joy. For several days one would have thought war had broken out in the new state of Minnesota with battles in every settlement. Old breach-loaders and blunderbusses were fired, Kentucky rifles and Samuel Colt’s new revolvers, percussion rifles, English guns, Scottish shotguns, Irish carbines, German cavalry pistols, French bird guns, and—not least—old Swedish muzzle loaders. In the Minnesota forests, the salutation of all its inhabitants thundered in unison. No gun had a report exactly like another; each rifle and gun and revolver and pistol had its own voice: European people fired their different weapons, uniting into one many-voiced greeting and salutation to the free land of the new world where they had become citizens.

BRING OUT THE BIG GUN! Now they could choose their own government. Now they could elect representatives and have a voice in Congress, could participate in the great decisions! Minnesota’s settlers now had a right to sit in the Capitol, at the table of great deliberations.

The echo of great expectations rose with the salutation in the clear May sky. Those who fired were themselves fired of a great expectation: their territory had grown up, had become a state. Now more immigrants would arrive, to break more fields, build more houses, more churches and schools, build better, more passable roads. Railroads and telegraph lines would now be built, mail-service would improve; the one-time territory would be drawn closer to its older brethren-states in the Union. Money matters would be regulated; new laws concerning printing and issuing of bills would destroy wildcat money forever. Reliable currency would make business grow again, and prosperity would return to the young state ruled only by the settlers themselves.