Locust (8 page)

As things started looking bad for the locusts, their counsel resorted to the ecclesiastical version of the “race card” in the O. J. Simpson trial. He proposed that his clients were actually agents sent by the Almighty to punish the farmers for their sinful ways—and to curse these messengers would be to fight against God himself. But the prosecution was unshakable. With righteous indignation he asserted that the pious and near-saintly villagers were God’s people and the insects were surely diabolical. Indeed, for the besieged people to appeal to the Church for assistance was an act of authentic religiosity and abiding faith, not resistance to God.

The resolution of the trial was up to the bishop’s proctor, with a sentence pronounced solemnly in Latin by the ecclesiastical judge. In the Kaltern court, the proctor began by expressing his serious reservations that a misfired curse would become a boomerang, “being a weapon of such peculiar energy and activity that, if it fails to strike the object against which it is hurled, it returns to smite him, who hurled it.” Then, perhaps to provide himself with an alibi if the Almighty cross-examined him on Judgment Day, he claimed to be muddled by the complexity of the case, saying, “We cannot tell why God has sent these animals to devour the fruits of the earth; this is for us a sealed book.” The official next pontificated on what sins might have induced such a plague, which seemed to suggest that the judgment
would be in favor of the insects. However, in the end he set aside these arguments and ordered the swarm to vacate the countryside within six days or else suffer anathematization. The proctor’s declaration included one final recommendation aimed at the petitioners.

The court strongly suggested that the farmers avail themselves of prayers and penances. The former were left to the congregants’ discretion, but the latter were clearly specified. As was customary, the plaintiffs were instructed to manifest their penance in the form of tithes to the Church. It was widely known—although it bore repeating by the proctor—that abstinence from sin and payment of tithes, particularly the latter, enhanced the efficacy of anathema. In fact, the province had the option of shortcutting the legal system entirely and purchasing an anathema directly from the pope. But an end run of the ecclesiastical courts via the Vatican was not cheap. Although Kaltern was an affluent market town, famous for its wines, and lying just ten miles south of the locust infestation, the Botzen villagers were rather less wealthy, and so they settled on simply putting the locusts on trial. The procedural delay was problematical, what with the locusts busily chomping on their crops while the court’s officers pontificated. But the outcome of the trial was not in jeopardy, as there don’t appear to have been any cases that went the locusts’ way. And between the legal delays and the judge’s verdict—their relative contributions being left to the reader’s interpretation of biology and theology—the locusts left the region not long after the trial concluded.

The possibility that the Rocky Mountain locusts were God-sent was implicit in the most common biblical allusions used by the settlers in their letters and journals. These God-fearing people often made reference to the plagues of Egypt, although it was not always clear whether this was a theological analogy or literary device, as seen in this vivid recollection of a Nebraska homesteader:

A Minnesota homesteader, on seeing the whirling, glittering cloud of insects descending on her family’s farm, sank to her knees and wailed, “The locusts! God help us!” We have to wonder whether she was appealing to the Almighty for deliverance from his wrath or from evil. And remember Richard Chalmers, the character in
Gentleman from England,
who was unable to fathom the tales he’d been hearing of the locusts? Well, seeing is believing, and Annette Atkins recounts, “Watching the creatures at work, Chalmers remembered a Bible passage: ‘The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.’ At last he believed.” But, we might ask, what exactly did Chalmers come to believe?

According to a historical review of locust outbreaks in Missouri by George Jones, the settlers looked upon swarms as punishment for some moral shortcoming or evildoing. The biblical allusions by the settlers were not merely literary ploys; they were direct parallels to the Old Testament—and God was angry. This interpretation of the locust plagues was evinced in sermons to the people and in discussions among the clergy. A letter from Reverend August Kenter to Reverend J. H. Sieker in 1874 begins with some compassionate ambiguity as to God’s intention in having sent a swarm of locusts into his Minnesota community:

The reverend portrayed himself as a compassionate shepherd, providing for his congregants. And although he leaves little doubt as to the locusts having been sent by the Almighty, we might suppose that this disaster was simply a trial of the people’s faith. Maybe God was testing his flock, as he had done with Job. But the rest of Reverend Kenter’s angst-filled letter, although failing to explain what sins warranted such cosmic retribution, leaves no doubt that this disaster was a divine punishment:

If the locust invasions were deserved by those who suffered from the consequent hunger and poverty, then the social reaction to the besieged farmers was at least largely consistent. The victims were widely viewed as impoverished mendicants, whose situation—even if not a result of having angered God—was evidence of a sinful lack of character.

The less widely held theological interpretation of the locust invasions was that the swarms were of demonic origin. Perhaps the most impassioned case for this view came from a Minnesota pioneer who
lamented, “The Lord only knows which harmed the poor settlers more, the prowling Red-skins who were wont to sally forth from the hills and uplands or the green imps of satan the grasshoppers, which pounced upon us in bewildering hordes—both literally took the bread out of our mouths.” In this view, the godless natives along with the locusts (and presumably the wolves and other creatures that menaced the settlers) were all part of a diabolical plot. The wilderness was often perceived as a dark and foreboding place, so it was sensible to assert that the swarms were an outpouring of evil from this depraved land. The homesteader was something of an agrarian missionary, converting the heathen wilderness into an orderly garden. If the homesteaders lost their land to the locusts, then they were simply unfortunate victims of satanic forces.

This religious view was consistent with the social interpretation of the locust-besieged settlers as deserving of assistance. These bedraggled farmers were victims of evildoers, as opposed to the unworthy poor who parasitized the hardworking sectors of American society. After all, the poor, hungry settlers were the salt of the earth, yeoman farmers building the nation from the ground up. The locusts had destroyed their crops but not their virtue. Such an appeal was made on behalf of the Kansas homesteaders:

But during the peak of the locust outbreaks in the 1870s, the nation was in the grip of an economic depression. There was plenty of suffering concentrated in the cities, so there was not much sympathy to spare for the scattered farmers. Factories were fast replacing farms as the financial heart and cultural soul of the growing nation. Moreover, the homesteaders had already been offered free land:
How much more public largess could they expect? The hardships of the frontier—including blizzards, droughts, loneliness, Indians, and locusts—were viewed as “part of the deal.” But if providing physical assistance was a matter of intense debate and social reluctance, spiritual aid was rather less costly and somewhat more graciously given.

Whether deserved or gratuitous, divine or demonic, the locust outbreaks required some response from religious leaders. The churches played a very limited role in providing physical aid, although it should be said that their capacity in this regard was rather nominal. Moreover, a tough-love minister might rationalize that withholding material handouts would foster moral growth, self-reliance, and responsibility—but refusing to offer prayers was beyond even the most harshly judgmental preachers. So religious leaders attempted to intercede with God on behalf of the suffering farmers.

For the most part, the clergy walked the careful line that had been drawn six centuries earlier based on the contention of Thomas Aquinas that animals, including locusts, were not culpable for their misdeeds. From here, Christian orthodoxy had eventually come to the standard position that the proper response to a troublesome swarm was to call upon the populace to repent and humbly entreat an angry God to remove the scourge. Although there are few records of what was said in church services about the Rocky Mountain locust, the prayers offered by state officials likely reflect the cautiously compassionate tone of the religious leaders.

Under pressure from the churches, Missouri’s governor was the first to seize on the political and theological advantages of a call for public prayer on behalf of the farmers. He managed to allude to the locusts without specifically mentioning these creatures. Perhaps the seeming absurdity of setting aside a day of prayer concerning an insect outbreak was deemed inconsistent with the dignity of the governor’s office. And so, in May of 1875, Charles H. Hardin somewhat obliquely proclaimed:

Many years later, Leland Ossian Howard, the fourth chief entomologist to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, revealed that the timing of Hardin’s “day of fasting and prayer” was not arbitrarily chosen. Rather, the governor had consulted with the state entomologist, who advised Hardin that the locusts would begin to fly from the infested regions in early June. So Hardin’s timing for an appeal to divine intervention was rather more ecologically sophisticated and politically cynical than the merely fortuitous delays of the ecclesiastical courts in earlier centuries. And this locust prosecution didn’t have the grinding officiousness of an ecclesiastical trial. Whether through the power of science or that of religion, within a few days of the time dedicated to prayer the swarms departed. Not since Saint Magnus, Abbot of Füssen (Germany), repulsed a locust swarm using the staff of Saint Columba in 666 had the Church been able to lay claim to such stunning and immediate entomological efficacy. And just as locusts bred more locusts, the people hoped that success—even if miraculous—might breed further success.

Following the locust invasions of 1876, various groups had pressured the governor of Minnesota to issue an official call for a day of prayer. In March 1877, churches turned up the political and theological heat. Urgent requests poured into the capital from religious leaders across the afflicted counties. Some took matters into their own hands: Catholics near Cold Springs pledged to offer prayers to the Blessed Virgin for fifteen years and to construct a chapel in her honor
if she would intervene with the Almighty to lift the scourge. A few pragmatic petitioners advocated that the governor declare a “day of work,” with the attendant wages going to alleviate the suffering of the farmers left destitute by the locusts. But demands for spiritual supplication were more common and conventional—and, in politically pragmatic terms, more likely to be accepted by the citizens. Offering up prayers was one thing—giving up wages was quite another.