The Settlers (26 page)

“No neighbor shall make decisions for us!”

After Kristina had calmed down a little, she began to think she must not be unjust toward her neighbors; surely only the best of intentions had caused them to call today. Uncle Petrus was perfectly honest in his concern for them: his talk to her had been sincere and fatherly.

But Karl Oskar replied, why must people eternally worry about other people’s souls? Why not be satisfied with the care of their own? Olausson was a thrifty and capable settler, and his advice and examples were often worth following. A man like him was needed among the immigrants: he was interested in communal matters and got things started. The only trouble was that he tried to manage people without being asked, and against their will.

“Like Uncle Danjel, he has been punished at home for his Bible explanations,” reminded Kristina.

“Exactly—in Sweden Olausson himself was a sectarian, yet here in America he can’t stand them!”

“It’s very strange; how can he be so intolerant out here?”

Karl Oskar volunteered that Petrus Olausson had become so warmly attached to religious freedom that he no longer allowed it to anyone but himself.

Well, the pleasant neighborliness with the Helsinge family seemed to be over. The Olaussons had been shown the door and were not likely to return. But new neighbors had arrived, and more would come, by and by. The first settlers at Ki-Chi-Saga need no longer live as hermits. However, said Karl Oskar, he would rather live without neighbors than have to fight with them.

For a long time Kristina continued to think about Uncle Petrus, this strange man. In Sweden he had suffered punishment and persecution for his belief, in America he himself persecuted people who believed differently. Could anyone understand this kind of person?

How could people who had sprung from the same Creator and belonged to the same race be so intolerant of each other? It was a shame. Here in these great wild forests a small group of people had settled; they came from the same country and spoke the same language; all of them had to begin life anew, in a new land; they were poor, dependent on themselves, and needed each other’s company; they lived so far apart that the distance between their houses in itself kept them apart. Must they now also close their doors against each other because different churches and different faiths existed in this country? Must they separate even more—and because of religion? Because of Christ’s gospel, which preached that all people were brethren?

Was it impossible to live in unity and enjoy each other because of one’s faith?

If any people in this world needed to live harmoniously it was the small group of Swedish settlers in the St. Croix Valley. It must be God’s intention that they be friends.

IX

HEMLANDET
COMES TO THE IMMIGRANTS

—1—

Early one morning in the first week of May the anticipated increase in the Duvemåla family took place. Kristina escaped the dreaded twin birth; she was delivered of a girl. The evening before, she had sent a message to Ulrika, who had dispatched Miss Skalrud to aid her. The Norwegian midwife arrived at the cabin a couple of hours too late, but remained for a few days while Kristina stayed in bed. Never before had she felt so weak and worn out after a birth.

Shortly before her delivery Pastor Erland Törner had returned from Illinois, and he had now resumed his pastoral duties in the St. Croix Valley, where he traveled from place to place among his countrymen, as he had done the year before. He came one Sunday to Duvemåla and christened Karl Oskar’s and Kristina’s newborn baby; with a minister available they had no excuse for delaying the baptism.

This time the mother alone had chosen the name for the child. The little girl was named Anna Evelina Ulrika, the first two names after Kristina’s own mother—Anna Evelina Andersdotter. But the girl was to be called Ulrika.

By giving her daughter Ulrikas name Kristina had in her own way cleansed her home, which the Olaussons considered unclean and degraded by Mrs. Henry O. Jackson of Stillwater.

The neighbors had said: do not open your door to this woman! She had replied, and let them know where she stood: she welcomed an Ulrika who would be a permanent part of the household.

—2—

Great things were happening at Ki-Chi-Saga this year. During the spring and summer of 1854 the first great wave of Swedish immigrants washed over the St. Croix Valley. They came in large groups, by the hundreds, and the population of the valley was doubled many times over.

The settlers began to arrive as soon as the ice had melted and the steamboats could ply the river. Already in March and April the first arrivals found their way to the big lake. They had emigrated from Småland, Helsingland, and Östergötland. Larger groups came later in the summer, mostly Smålanders. One group of fourteen families claimed lands along the shores. But a great many of these immigrants settled in the eastern part of the valley, where there were passable roads and more easily accessible claims.

All the claims suitable for farming around Ki-Chi-Saga—the fertile meadows along the lake slopes—were now taken. The newcomers put up their log cabins along bays and sounds, on jutting points and tongues of land. On the surveyor’s map, obtained from the land office, the Chippewa word Ki-Chi-Saga had been changed to Chisago Lake. The metamorphosis of the lake had even reached its name. And the thirty-six squares, or sections, around the lake which had been surveyed for settling were now referred to as Chisago Township on maps and deeds. This in turn was part of a larger square, comprising thirty-six square miles. Each section was divided into four claims; thus the whole district contained 144 homesteads. There was still room for more settlers in Chisago Township.

The newcomers told of an immense emigration from Sweden to come next year. Thousands of people were planning to leave, and it was expected that this horde would head for Minnesota to settle among their countrymen.

So the Indian lake Ki-Chi-Saga was renamed. The heathen water was christened by the white tillers and divided into squares and the name written down on deeds and entered on records. The nomad people were pushed farther and farther away from the forests where they had hunted and the waters where they had fished. Their fires had gone out, their camping sites lay unoccupied.

But on the western shore, high above Ki-Chi-Saga’s surface, the Indian still stood watch, the red-brown sandstone cliff with its image of a savage, still rose like a heaven-high, unconquerable bastion. The Indians immense head was turned to the east; with empty, black, cliff-cave eyes he watched day and night over his old hunting grounds and fishing waters. Each spring his crown of thickets turned green, but with each spring he saw more trespassers arrive. And his eyes remained fixed, as if mirroring an inconsolable sorrow in the dark depth of the cliff. From the east they came, this race of intruders, and the high watchman spied forever in that direction from where the land’s new inhabitants approached in ever increasing numbers.

One race wandered into the land, and the other wandered away. But the Indian at Ki-Chi-Saga remained at his watch, looking in the direction of the rising sun.

—3—

The only unclaimed quarter of Karl Oskar Nilsson’s section—the northeast corner—was taken in the spring by an immigrant from Småland. Their neighbor to the north was Johan Kron from Algutsboda, Kristina’s home parish. Kron was the village soldier but had retired from the service and emigrated with his large family, his wife and eight children. The family had brought along two cradles, one for each of the smallest children, who were twins. So the last homestead suddenly had ten inhabitants.

Section 35 of Chisago Township, the new name for Ki-Chi-Saga, where Karl Oskar had been the first settler, was now entirely claimed and occupied.

Axes ringing in the forest—no longer were these unfamiliar sounds. This spring when Karl Oskar walked over his land he could hear echoes from all directions. Here Swedish axes went after the trees, here trunks fell all around, here logs were piled on logs for new homes. Who could have imagined that so many would have followed him from Sweden? Farmers from his own parish were felling trees for log houses, farmers from Algutsboda, Linneryd, Elmeboda, and Hovmantorp, all neighbor parishes of Ljuder. As yet he had not run into anyone he knew from home but he expected to do so any day.

The ring of the axes was a joyous sound to Kristina’s ears; it brought her the message of new neighbors building their houses; it told her of new people who would live close to her. It rang out the end of the great loneliness. Living here would no longer be so drab. Already enough people had arrived to make up a good-sized village, even though the houses weren’t as close together as in the old country. If the emigration continued, perhaps eventually there would be enough people to make up a large parish. And with each family’s arrival she felt the same wonder: why had they come so far to settle in a corner of the world so remote?

Karl Oskar said that it looked as though all the people in the old country were following their example and moving to the Territory. And there was plenty of space out here—there was room for the whole Kingdom of Sweden. But the upper classes would probably remain where they were; those useless creatures lived well and in comfort in Sweden.

Yes, it seemed as if the homeland was coming to America. And in a way it did come to the immigrants that spring—in the form of a newspaper.

It came about through Pastor Törner; Pastor Hasselquist in Galesburg, Illinois, had begun to print a paper in Swedish,
Hemlandet, det Gamla och det Nya (The Homeland, the Old and the New),
and he asked his colleague to spread the word in the Swedish settlements. As Pastor Törner traveled about he wrote down the names of those who wanted to subscribe. The paper would describe the most important happenings in both Sweden and America and would appear fortnightly. The price was only a dollar a year, but the publisher appealed to the better-off among his countrymen for an extra fifty cents in order to purchase Swedish type. His press did not have all of the Swedish letters, and since they were difficult to obtain in America, he must order them from Sweden.

Karl Oskar felt it would be worth a dollar (plus fifty cents for the Swedish type) to obtain news from Sweden twice a month; he subscribed to
Hemlandet, det Gamla och det Nya,
and from then on, picked up his paper every second week in Mr. Abbott’s store in Taylors Falls. Algot Svensson, his neighbor to the west, was also a subscriber, and they decided to pick up the paper in turn so they need not go to the post office more than once a month.

And
Hemlandet
was received in the settler’s home as a dear and welcome guest. They held the paper with cautious hands as if afraid it might fall to pieces in the handling.

The news sheet had four pages, and five columns to each page, all printed in Swedish. Karl Oskar and Kristina read and discussed almost every word in
Hemlandet.
After supper he would read to her while she finished her chores. On Sunday afternoons, when she was free for a few hours, they would sit down at the table, with the paper spread before them, and go through paragraph after paragraph systematically.

Through
Hemlandet
they learned that a great war had broken out in Europe a few months earlier: on March 28 war had been declared between Russia on one side and England and France on the other. Besides, the Russians and the Turks had been fighting since last fall, because the Russians were not allowed to protect the Turkish subjects of Christian belief. It was assumed that Sweden would join in the war against Russia to retrieve Finland. But Kristina felt Sweden shouldn’t bother with this; she had two brothers of military age and she did not like to think of them participating in human slaughter. Only people who wanted to should take part in wars. Karl Oskar had no close relatives who need go—only his sister, Lydia, was left in Sweden of his generation—but he too hoped the old country would remain at peace. War was an amusement for lords and kings but no plaything for farmers, who had more important things to do. All this warring would probably in the end destroy the Old World.

Another amazing piece of news was that the Swedes were thinking of building railroads here and there in the country, beginning with the provinces of Vårmland and Skåne. It was not easy to imagine that perhaps one day a steam wagon might come rolling through Ljuder parish. As yet, Karl Oskar thought, they and the other emigrants were the only Swedes who had traveled in that way.

Telegraphy was the newest contraption. Messages were sent along steel wire with the speed of lightning. This invention too had reached Sweden: a wire had recently been strung all the distance between Stockholm and Gothenburg. “A Simple Explanation of Telegraphy” was the title of the article in
Hemlandet:

A Telegraph is the name of an instrument through which people can make signs to each other over great distances. It carries tidings from one end of the Union to the other, speedier than a wink of the eye. It has been agreed that certain signs represent certain letters in the alphabet and in this way a conversation can be carried on. It is unimportant if the two communicants are a mile or a thousand miles apart; the conversation goes on with equal speed and what is said with signs arrives on the moment.

In almost every issue of the paper there was a description of some new, amazing invention which the clever Americans had made. There was Pitt’s threshing machine, which threshed a bushel of wheat in a minute; the reaper, which was constructed in such a way that it cut the crop with steel arms; the sewing machine, which could baste and sew when tramped by a human foot. From now on one could sew garments with one’s feet instead of one’s hands. Kristina had just finished her first weaving of last year’s flax, and she could have used this tramping apparatus now that she was ready to make clothes for all of them.

They read about the broad city streets with railroads in the middle, about illumination from a vapor called gas, about the iron pipes which led water under the ground and at any moment squirted a stream if one needed water. But the strangest discovery was a new, secret power called electricity. It gave heat and light, it could be used to pull vehicles, it could heal sickness, like lameness, fever, epilepsy. Electricity returned hearing to deaf people, taught the mute to use their tongues.
Hemlandet
had a clarifying article about electricity: