Unto a Good Land (30 page)

Kristina turned to Robert and said: “We have you to thank for this milk!”

At last Robert had shown that he could lend his mouth as a help to all, explain in the foreign language what they wished, and obtain what they needed. This time he had prepared himself well: he had repeated the words to himself many times before he used them:
We want to buy milk.
This was the way he must do it—chew the words many times, as he chewed his food.

Robert grew courageous from his success, and as the kind woman was returning to the cabin he followed her and said: “Respected Sir, how can we reach Taylors Falls?”

He asked Karl Oskar to show her the piece of paper with Anders Månsson’s address. But she did not look at it or answer him—instead she hurried inside and closed the door. When Robert tried to open it he found it bolted. The woman had given them a pail of milk and then she had locked herself in the cabin, without even waiting to be paid! That was peculiar.

The immigrants eagerly emptied the milk pail; the children were given as much milk as they could drink, and there was still plenty for the grownups. The milk was cream-thick, the cows hereabouts must get good grass; all felt refreshed by this unexpected refreshment.

But the American woman had not waited to be paid. She had locked herself in the cabin. She was afraid to let them come inside, this much they understood.

They put the empty pail at the door and waited for her to reappear. Robert was still determined to find out where Anders Månsson lived. And he began to practice a new sentence:
I want to expose you this paper with an address . . .
when suddenly a dog’s bark was heard quite near them, and two men with guns in their hands approached across the clearing.

The men who headed toward them were apparently hunters. They wore broad-brimmed hats and skin jackets on which the fur still clung at the seams. They were unkempt, fully bearded, and were accompanied by two fierce curs whose hair stood on end. As they neared the Swedish immigrants they lifted their guns threateningly. The dogs barked furiously, and the frightened children began to yell.

A commotion of indescribable fear broke out among the travelers at the strangers’ unexpected behavior. The women pressed their children to them and huddled together, the men looked irresolutely from one to the other, feeling for their knives. The strangers acted and spoke roughly, and although the immigrants couldn’t understand their words, they understood their guns: the men ordered them not to move and seemed ready to lay hands on them. Karl Oskar and Jonas Petter fingered their knives—their guns were still in their chests in Stillwater—and wondered what kind of ruffians they had encountered. What did the men want? If they were hunters, they ought to pursue their game and let peaceful folk alone. This Karl Oskar and Jonas Petter told them in Swedish.

A third man was now approaching across the clearing. He was shorter than the other two, but he too had a gun and was dressed like them. His trousers had great patches over the knees. He carried two rabbits by their hind legs, blood dripping from their headless bodies. He looked more threatening than either of the other two hunters.

The unarmed group of men, women, and children was now surrounded by three men with guns, apparently hunters of peaceful human beings. Now they were indeed in danger and they huddled close together like a herd of game, stalked and encircled by hounds. What could they do?

The dogs rushed to the third hunter and licked the blood dripping from his rabbits. Then, suddenly, one of the immigrant women rushed after the dogs, calling in fury at the top of her old voice: “You bastard! Don’t you know how to behave?”

It was Fina-Kajsa, the oldest and most decrepit of the women. She rushed forward in an insane rage as if threatening the ruffian. But suddenly she stopped and stared at the man, and the hunter with the rabbits pushed back his broad-brimmed hat; he too stopped and stared; his chin fell, leaving his mouth open.

Fina-Kajsa took a few steps forward: “Shoot your paltry rabbits, but leave peaceful folk alone! Have you no shame at all, boy? To meet your old mother with a gun!”

The hunter’s chin fell another inch. He dropped his rabbits on the ground.

“Throw down your shooting iron too,” Fina-Kajsa ordered him.

“Mother!”

“I had expected you to greet me like a decent man. And here you and your pack of friends aim guns. . . .”

“Mother—I didn’t expect you!”

“I thought I would never get here. But here you see me as I am, Anders my son.”

“Mother—you’re here!”

“I thought America had no end!”

“Where’s Father?”

“He lies on the bottom of the sea.”

“Is Father
dead
?”

“As dead as the rest on the bottom of the sea! And the grindstone he had brought for you lies there too.”

“Did Father bring me a grindstone?”

“The stones are cheap on Öland. Here is our old iron pot! Here, right in my hand! They broke one leg. . . . Anders . . . if you don’t recognize your mother you at least remember our old pot!”

“Yes, yes! You bring our old
gryta
!
Yes, yes. . . . Welcome, Mother!”

Mother and son had found each other, and the group around them listened in silence.

—4—

They had reached Taylors Falls; they were only a short distance from Anders Månsson’s home.

He told them he had been out with his two neighbors to shoot some rabbits for supper. And now they also heard the explanation for the strange behavior of the woman and the other two hunters: The settlers here were afraid of cholera, and all newcomers were met and questioned before they were allowed to enter the settlement. If anyone arrived from a contaminated region he was put into a shed near the falls where he was fumigated with sulphur and tar for a few days before he was let out. Weak people could not stand the ordeal of being smoked like hams, some only lasted a day before fainting. But it was a fact that in this manner they had so far avoided the sickness in Taylors Falls.

Fina-Kajsa pointed out to the group what might have happened to them if she hadn’t been along to recognize Anders. And turning to her son she asked: “But what kind of sickness ails you? Your face blooms like a red rose!”

“It’s the heat, Mother.”

Anders Månsson greatly resembled his father, whom they all remembered from the beginning of their journey, and whom they had helped bury in the North Sea. Anders was a thickset man with broad, somewhat stooping shoulders. He was almost bald, his complexion was red, his nut-brown eyes restless, avoiding a direct look at them. At first he had looked threatening, but now they discovered he was shy to a fault.

Twilight was upon them, they had arrived none too soon. They walked down a slope, through a grove of green trees, and arrived at a level, low-lying piece of ground. They could see water, a lagoon or small tarn, bordered by tall grass. Near the water was tilled ground, they saw a yellowed stubble field with some rye shocks. These were Anders Månsson’s fields which he himself had cleared. By now it was too dark to see how far the fields extended. A cabin stood in the flat meadow, with a few lindens and elms around it. There were other cabins across the rye field.

Anders Månsson approached the small cabin of roughly hewn logs; it was situated like a hay barn in the meadow.

“So this is your hay shed,” said Fina-Kajsa.

“Hay shed?” the son repeated, as if not remembering what the Swedish word meant.

Anders opened the door, and Fina-Kajsa stuck in her head to inspect the hay crop in her son’s shed.

“Did you get much hay this summer?” she asked. She couldn’t see any hay at all, but in the dim light she espied pieces of furniture; clothing and tools hung on pegs around the walls: “You keep your hay shed empty!”

“Yes—no—You see, Mother, I have no hay in this house—”

“Do you have people living in the barn?”

“I live here myself.”

“Isn’t this your hay barn?”

“No, Mother. It is my house.”

“But why do you live in the barn? Where’s your main house?”

“I have built this cabin for my own use. Welcome to my home, Mother! We must boil these rabbits for supper.”

And Anders Månsson took out his hunting knife and began to skin and clean his game.

Fina-Kajsa turned to her Swedish traveling companions: “My son is the same! Here he stands lying to my face. He won’t show us his home. He’s telling stories. All of you can see this is nothing but a barn. A small barn.”

The rest of the immigrants had at first, like the old woman, taken this cabin for a hay barn, since it sat in the middle of a field. Also it was rather small, not more than fifteen or sixteen feet square. And the door, cut through the logs without a jamb, was as low as a barn door. Kristina whispered to Karl Oskar: This house was exactly like their meadow barn which had burned down when lightning struck it.

But by and by they all understood that Anders Månsson had led them to his main house; this barn was his home. All understood this, but none mentioned it—none except his mother.

“Anders! Don’t fool me any longer! Show me your house!” she commanded.

“This is my house, Mother! Come into my house, all you
Svenskar
!
I’ll fix you a good supper tonight.”

And the immigrants obeyed him and entered his humble abode; fatigue had overcome them to the very marrow of their bones, and they climbed with great contentment over the log serving as threshold, happy and pleased to be in a house, under a roof, having reached a shelter where they could rest.

But old Fina-Kajsa sat down on her pot outside the cabin, she remained there, repeating more and more severely, “Take me to your house!”

While all the others gathered in the cabin, and darkness fell, she remained there, sitting on her iron pot. At length Anders went outside and half carried, half dragged his mother over the threshold.

The group from Ljuder had now reached the end of their long journey. All but the widow Fina-Kajsa Andersdotter from Öland. She had not yet arrived: she had not yet seen the home her son had described in his letters. It had come to pass as she had predicted so often during the journey: she would never arrive.

XIII

DISTANT FIELDS LOOK GREENEST

—1—

The arrival of the Swedish immigrants in Taylors Falls was a momentous occurrence. The whole population of the village consisted of only thirty-odd people, and with the fifteen new arrivals it was increased in one day by half. Until now there had been only four women in the settlement; with the arrival of Fina-Kajsa, Kristina, Ulrika, and Elin their number had doubled. Previously there had been only three families, the rest were single men.

Taylors Falls had been named for an American, Jesse Taylor, who was the first white man to settle here, twelve years earlier; he had built a sawmill at the falls. He had since died, but the mill was operated by an old Irishman named Stephen Bolles who had also started a flour mill. A German couple, the Fischers, had recently opened a combined inn and store, consisting of two log cabins connected by a roofed passage. Mr. and Mrs. Fischer also kept a bull to serve the settlers’ cows. A general store was owned and operated by a Scot, Mr. Abbott, who was the postmaster as well, with the post office located in the store. The largest building in the settlement was occupied by the Stillwater Lumber Company.

Besides Fina-Kajsa’s son, two other Swedes lived in Taylors Falls, one man and one woman—Samuel Nöjd and Anna Johansdotter, the latter known as
Svenska Anna,
or Swedish Anna. Samuel Nöjd was a fur hunter by trade, and Swedish Anna was cook in a logging camp a few miles north of the village. With fifteen newcomers the Swedish population in this part of the St. Croix River Valley increased six-fold at once.

Anders Månsson offered the use of his cabin to his homeless countrymen until they could build living quarters for themselves or for as long as they wished to stay. Helping them thus he was only repaying a debt: “You have cared for my mother,” he said.

And should they feel too cramped in his cabin, they might sleep at German Fischer’s inn; lodging there would cost only ten cents a night for each person; they would, of course, have to sleep with other people, but never more than four in the same bed; and the host was quite strict and let no one wear his boots in bed. The Fischers were particular and cleanly people and maintained good order at their inn.

There were now sixteen persons living in Anders Månsson’s small cabin; but they had become accustomed to close quarters during their voyages; indeed, they had been more cramped in the holds. Here they could let their children run outside in the daytime and could themselves go out whenever they wished, so they need not jostle each other in the house all the time. Since Anders Månsson was kind enough to let them use his house, they accepted gratefully. In this way they saved a dollar and fifty cents a day, the amount it would have cost them if all had been forced to sleep at the inn. And Fina-Kajsa’s son felt proud that they considered his cabin good enough; he was well pleased with it himself. During his first winter in Taylors Falls he had lived with thirteen other people in a cabin half as large as this one. He said it was only nine feet square, and only six feet from the ground to the roof, and it had no flooring.

The travelers could now rest for a few days until their belongings arrived. The men helped Anders Månsson harvest his crop. His fields were smaller than they had realized; he had broken barely eight acres. He owned a team of oxen and two cows as well. But he would only keep one cow for the winter; he intended to butcher the other one, for she was too old to breed. Each time he milked his cows all four women came to watch him: they had never before seen a man do the milking.

As soon as the news spread of the arrival of guests at Anders Månsson’s, the two other Swedes in the settlement came to visit the immigrants from their homeland. Samuel Nöjd, the fur hunter, was a friendly, talkative man of about fifty, but he mixed so many English words with the Swedish that they understood only half of what he said. He had been in North America more than ten years, he had moved from place to place, and soon he would move away from this river valley: desirable fur-bearing animals were getting scarce hereabouts. He advised his countrymen to take land on the prairies instead of here.

Swedish Anna was in her forties, a buxom woman with big arms and a voluminous bosom. She was the picture of health, capable and unafraid, as a woman cooking for men in a logging camp should be. She showed also a tender, motherly side: she was much concerned over the small Swedish children and was surprised that the babies could have survived the long journey in such good health. Swedish Anna was a widow who had emigrated alone from Östergötland; Samuel Nöjd came from Dalecarlia.

Counting the new arrivals, there were now immigrants from four Swedish provinces in this valley; and the Smålanders, of course, were in the majority.

The newcomers were eager for information and at every opportunity questioned those who had arrived earlier: How was life for settlers in this St. Croix Valley, and how should they go about the business of getting settled? Anders Månsson, himself a homesteader, could best advise them; but he was a man of few words; much probing was required to learn anything from him. This much they discovered: The Territory was almost as large as all of Sweden, yet hardly more than two hundred settlers had taken up land and begun tilling it. Most of these lived to the south in Washington County. The Territory was as yet surveyed only along the rivers. To the west and southwest the whole country was still unsurveyed and unclaimed—it lay there free and open to the first claimant.

There was indeed space for all, land in abundance. But many of the inhabitants of the river valley took land only for the timber, said Anders Månsson. They did not clear fields, they cut down the forest and sold the lumber for a high profit. They left the soil untouched and grew rich from the forest. Most of the newcomers had only one desire: to get rich quickly.

The farmers from Ljuder said they had not come for that purpose. They were merely seeking to earn a living, they intended to break land, build houses, settle down: they had come to live on their land as settlers of this country, where they hoped in time to better their condition.

But they must begin from the very beginning and find everything a farmer needed, ground and house, chattel and cattle. And they were filled with concern at learning how much livestock cost: a cow, thirty dollars, a yoke of oxen, one hundred dollars. Hogs and poultry also fetched sky-high prices; Anders Månsson had only recently bought a laying hen in St. Paul for five dollars, but she had died of loneliness, and so he was unable to treat them to eggs. The exorbitant prices were explained in this way: domestic animals were also immigrants into the Territory, and as rare as the settlers themselves.

One evening, as all were gathered together in Anders Månsson’s cabin, Karl Oskar asked his advice: What should a man in his predicament do? He had sold his farm in Sweden, but most of the money had been spent on the journey, and he was now practically a pauper. He had only ninety dollars left in cash. A farmer needed first of all a team of oxen, and he didn’t even have enough money for that! And how could he buy land with the small sum he had left?

“You don’t pay for the land before it’s put on the market,” Anders Månsson explained. “To begin with, you must sit down on the claim as a squatter.”

And he explained what the word
squatter
meant—a settler who built his house on land that had not yet been surveyed or sold. That was why he needn’t pay anything for the claim to begin with. Later, when the land had been surveyed, the government would put it up at auction and he would have priority because he had been there first. Anyone wanting to take a claim as squatter need only locate and mark the place he wanted and report it to the land office in Stillwater. Then he could remain in security on the land until it was offered for public sale. It might be several years before he need begin paying for the land.

This arrangement sounded generous to Swedish peasant ears—no one could ask for better conditions.

“I came here as a squatter myself,” said Fina-Kajsa’s son. “To squat means to sit on one’s haunches.”

“Skvatter . . . skvatter . . .” Karl Oskar attempted to pronounce the word, but its sound had something degrading in it, it sounded like a reproach to his poverty. “Yes, I guess I too must be such a one. An impoverished farmer, arriving in America . . .”

The other two farmers were better off than he; Danjel had four hundred dollars left from the sale of his farm Kärragärde, and Jonas Petter had about two hundred and fifty dollars left of his traveling money. Karl Oskar had the least for a new start. But Anders Månsson advised all three to take squatters’ claims on unsurveyed land, then they could use their cash for livestock and implements. Each settler could claim a hundred and sixty acres, the American acre being a little less than the Swedish acre.

Karl Oskar thought: The manor at Kråkesjö at home had only seventy-five acres of tilled fields. If all the land he could take here were tillable, he would have fields for two manors!

Anders Månsson also told them the price they would have to pay when the land went on sale: one dollar and twenty-five cents for each acre. This sounded like a most reasonable price for such rich and fertile land as they had seen on their walk from Stillwater. A farmer would undoubtedly be able to manage and prosper here as soon as he got started.

Anders Månsson continued: All products from the fields commanded high prices: bread, butter, pork, milk, eggs, cheese. Consequently, broken ground was highly valuable. If they were able to clear and plant the fields, and hold on to them, they would soon be well off. He himself had experienced great adversity during the four years after his arrival; the first summer his crop had suffered from drought, the second year a forest fire had spread to his fields and part of his rye had burned while in the shocks; last year it was the grasshoppers, which appeared in such swarms that they darkened the sun and left nothing but bare ground behind them. Each fifth year was a hopper year, when every green blade was eaten, and last summer they had even devoured his jacket and the scythe handle which he happened to leave in the field; he could only be grateful they hadn’t eaten him too.

Karl Oskar had closely inspected Månsson’s fields and he did not think the Ölander was an industrious farmer; he had suffered adversity, yes—but why hadn’t he broken more land in four years? All he had to do was to plow this stone-free ground. Nor had he built a threshing barn as yet, in spite of all the lumber around him. Månsson threshed his crops in wintertime on the ice of the small lake. But that was a poor way to handle grain. Karl Oskar thought something must be wrong with Fina-Kajsa’s son, he seemed to lack energy and an enterprising spirit.

“The first years are hard ones for settlers,” Anders Månsson assured them. He continued: There were no roads anywhere out here in the wilderness, and it was not until last year that he had been able to buy a yoke of oxen in St. Paul. Before he got the team his chores had been endless; he himself had carried or pulled everything that had to be moved. A settler without a team had to use his own back, be his own beast of burden.

Fina-Kajsa looked searchingly at her son: “You’ve grown hunchbacked here in America, Anders. Have you carried something that was too heavy?”

“No longer, Mother. I carry nothing more now.”

He straightened his bent shoulders. Then he sat silent a while and replied only in monosyllables as they tried to glean more information about his four settler years. He seemed to avoid their questions and said at last, in an effort to clarify everything to them: He had had his difficulties at times, but he had managed, one way or another.

Jonas Petter questioned him to the very point: “Do you regret your emigration?”

“Oh no,
nej
!
Never! I don’t mean that!” he assured them eagerly. “I have no such thoughts any longer.”

“I think you have been ailing, you look so old,” Fina-Kajsa said.

“The weather here is hard on one’s health,” the son exclaimed quickly. “If you intend to stay long in Minnesota Territory, it is well to take care of your health from the very beginning. I was sick the two first summers because I hadn’t taken care of myself.”

The first year he had felt lonely in America, and his thoughts had returned to Sweden at times. But the second year he had begun to like the country, and the third year he actually felt at home, and ever since, he had liked it more and more; in every respect the new country was better than the old.

And now he would soon get his American papers and become a “sitter.” “Sitter” was Anders Månsson’s word for citizen.

“I have already got my first
najonal-paper.
”

From his Swedish chest Anders Månsson produced a large paper, which he proudly showed his guests, but as it was printed in English, only Robert was able to glean some of its contents. They would all in due time get such papers, and then they too would become “sitters” in North America.

Anders Månsson’s house guests understood plainly that he was unwilling to tell all of what had happened to him out here. He was a taciturn man and seemed to have a secret, something that weighed on his mind.

The newcomers hoped to profit by the experience of those who had come before them. Already they were aware that their own problems would be greater because they had arrived at this inopportune season; it would be a whole year before they could harvest anything from the earth. Somehow they must sustain life during this long year of waiting; above all, they must manage to live through the winter.