Unto a Good Land (31 page)

—2—

In time their belongings arrived at Taylors Falls, having been freighted by the lumber company’s barge; but they were dismayed at the great cost: thirty dollars! Karl Oskar, Danjel, and Jonas Petter must pay ten dollars each.

“Those dirty dogs!” exclaimed Karl Oskar, but aside from voicing his disgust he could do nothing about the price.

Anders Månsson was of the opinion that the lumber company took advantage of settlers as often as possible. A barrel of flour cost ten dollars in Stillwater, and fifteen in Taylors Falls, because the company charged five dollars for freight.

But the settlers had waited impatiently for their goods; now they had their own tools and needn’t wait another day to go out and find land; without delay they must seek out their places for settling.

The clothes chests from Sweden were opened. Karl Oskar first of all dug up his axes from the bottom of his chest.

“You have two axes!” Anders Månsson exclaimed in surprise. “Then you are not poor.”

Karl Oskar had only brought along one heavy ax and one hand ax. He still had no felling ax.

“If you have an ax all your own you are ahead of the rest of us.”

The settlers often owned an ax together, using it in turn, every second day, or every second week, according to agreement. Sometimes three might own one ax together. Anders Månsson knew a settler who had owned no tools except a knife and one-half of an ax when he arrived. Seeing all the tools Karl Oskar had brought from Sweden, he said with respect in his voice: A well-off man has arrived here.

Fina-Kajsa’s son had promised to go with them and point out places suitable to settle on. It was decided that Arvid and Robert should remain at home with the women and children while the men were away looking for land. Following their guide’s advice, they now made themselves ready for the expedition: they took food for three days, and each carried a copper container of water, as it was said they might get chills and fever from the stagnant water in the forest. Besides axes, they took their guns. In these regions no one went far from home without a weapon of some kind, and a settler was as much dependent on his loaded gun as a limping man is on his staff.

They were to walk through regions where Indians had their favorite hunting grounds; as yet their fall hunt hadn’t begun, but they moved their wigwams constantly and had no permanent camp. Anders Månsson had never been annoyed by the Chippewas, the tribe roaming in the forests near Taylors Falls; during the winter, Indians often came into his cabin to warm themselves, and they sat hours on end by the fire without saying a single word. Many times they had brought him venison. But the savages were never to be relied on; no one knew what they might do, or when they had murder on their minds. A trader, James Godfrey by name, living alone in his cabin not far from Taylors Falls, had been scalped by the Indians one night last winter as he lay in bed. It was thought that the trader had taken advantage of the Indians in some deal and that they had murdered him in revenge. The Chippewas never disturbed anyone unless they themselves had been disturbed or cheated.

So one morning at dawn the Swedish farmers set out to find new homes.

Småländers had always looked down on Ölanders, yet here walked three Småländers guided by an Ölander. They headed southwest down the broad valley. Their guide told them that if they continued in this direction they would find the most fertile soil in the whole river valley. A road had been begun from Taylors Falls, and they followed this clearing as far as it ran, then they had to find their own way, using their axes to cut through the worst thickets. The farther away from the river they walked, the fewer pine trees and more leafy wood they found. The birches here were mostly river birch, growing near water. The newcomers asked their guide the names of the trees that were unknown to them. He pointed out cedars and walnut trees, and they tried to remember the color of the bark and the shape of leaves and trunks. In a bog they discovered larches which they at first assumed to be some kind of pine tree. But the needles were softer, and they were told that these trees lost their needles in winter and made fine lumber. The deeper they penetrated into the lush valley, the larger and more numerous grew the sugar maples, from which sap was tapped in spring. From the rich, sweet maple sap sugar and sirup were made.

The three Småland farmers missed only one leaf-tree in this new forest—the alder tree, which supplied them with material for wooden shoes at home. And when they were told that no alders grew here, they wondered which one of the other trees might supply them with wood suitable for shoes. Their leather shoes would soon be worn out, and they would be forced to use the same kind of footgear they had worn in Sweden.

The land-seekers walked leisurely through the fertile valley, they did not walk straight ahead, they turned off to left or right, they made side trips, they observed everything they saw, particularly evaluating the soil. They walked as their forefathers once had walked through their homeland, countless thousands of years ago; they sought what their forebears had sought before a single turf had been turned in that parish where later generations had cultivated their fields. And they compared the American forest with the one at home and felt proud when they discovered that this enormously rich growth lacked one tree which was found in the forest of the land they had left.

They saw game frequently: rabbit ears stuck up in the grass, big fat squirrels scampered about and jabbered like magpies, near streams and lakelets they saw flocks of wild geese. Gnawed saplings indicated the presence of elk. Once a furred animal ran up a tree, and Jonas Petter recognized the hairy thief who had tried to steal their food the night they camped in the forest. He was told it was a raccoon, a harmless little animal that abounded in that country.

The forest shone luminously green, the grass stood tall in open places, an abundance of wild fruit and berries weighed down the branches of trees and bushes this beautiful August day.

“The Lord’s sun has never shone on a more pleasing countryside,” said Danjel Andreasson.

And where the land-seekers wandered now they had only to choose: they could stop wherever they wished and each stake out one hundred and sixty acres of land.

From time to time, Karl Oskar measured the depth of the topsoil with a small shovel he had brought along. Black mold lay on clay bottom; red clay on hard ground, blue clay on low-lying ground. In a few places he found sand mixed with the clay. But in practically every place he dug, he found topsoil to a depth of two feet, sometimes nearly three feet.

“More likely earth can’t be found in the whole of creation,” Jonas Petter said.

But they were also looking for clean drinking water; they had been warned that some of the stagnant pools and tarns were full of insects and small animals which caused dangerous sicknesses. If they were unable to locate a spring or running stream near their place of settling, they would have to dig wells for drinking water, and Anders Månsson maintained that this would be a heavy, long-drawn-out undertaking: once he had had to dig a well twenty-five feet deep.

He showed them all the lakes he was familiar with. The greatest lake in this region lay farther to the southwest and was called Ki-Chi-Saga; it was an Indian name, said to mean “Great and Beautiful Lake.” Anders Månsson himself had never roamed the forest as far as Ki-Chi-Saga, but he knew a Swede, Johannes Nordberg, who had reached the big lake last autumn. Nordberg was a farmer from Helsingland who had embraced Erik Janson’s new religion and had accompanied him to Illinois. Later he had fallen away from that sect and had left the colony on the prairie to look for a new place in which to settle in the north. He was said to be the first white man ever to see Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, and he had told Månsson that the finest land and the richest soil he had ever seen in this valley lay around it. He had gone back to Illinois but had promised to return last spring with many of Janson’s deserters to settle near the lake with the Indian name. As yet nothing had been heard of him.

However, added the guide, fine soil was obtainable much nearer. They needn’t go so far to find good places for settling.

The immigrants made no haste in choosing a site, but inspected the land carefully as they walked along. The heat also forced them to move slowly; they breathed heavily in the muggy atmosphere. They sought to refresh themselves with the water they had brought with them, but it was already tepid in the copper containers and did not quench their thirst.

In the depth of the forest they suddenly came upon a strange mound, and their guide told them this was an old Indian grave. They stopped and looked in wonder: earth had been thrown up in a great pile, and grass had grown over it. The mound had oval sides, narrowing at the top, and resembled a giant beast whose legs had sunk into the ground, an animal stuck in the forest and unable to move for so long that grass had grown on its back. And inside this huge body rested the dead savages, in the midst of their forest hunting grounds; they had never known Christ or the Gospel, throughout life they had been heathens, and so after death were lost souls. But peaceful seemed their camp, lying here in the thickest part of the wild forest, green and thriving was the grass covering their grave.

The peasants from Sweden stood a long time gazing at this mound built by human hands, rising like a round, green-furred animal-body, and they sensed that they beheld something immeasurably ancient, something from the long-past time of witches, trolls, and sagas. In this barrow where the country’s native hunters returned to dust, the immigrants sensed vaguely that inexplicable something which makes women and children shudder in the dark. Before encountering these savage people in life, they had come upon them in death, they had met the dead before the living.

The strangers from faraway Sweden knew nothing of the answer the Chippewa chief had given the whites when they had asked the price of the tribal hunting grounds: “Fill this valley with gold until it lies even with the hills! Yet we will not take your gold for the graves of our fathers. Wait still a little longer, until all my people are dead. Then you may take our whole valley, and all our graves, and keep your gold as well.”

The men who had traveled thousands of miles to take over the Chippewas’ land, and who measured the topsoil of the Indians’ hunting grounds, gazed in wonder at the grave in the forest; they stood there timidly, glancing about suspiciously, as though listening to the oldest saga of all sagas in the world.

—3—

The land-seekers rested in the shade of some maples and ate from their knapsacks: bread and cold rabbit. They took off their shirts, wet and clammy with perspiration, and spread them to dry on the bushes. But as they sat with their upper bodies bare, the mosquitoes attacked them in great swarms and bit them furiously. They made a fire to drive away the plague, but Anders Månsson said the best way to protect oneself was to cover the whole body with mud; while sleeping in the forest one could in this way rest peacefully.

Anders Månsson had been a homesteader for some time, he seemed to have much useful information. Jonas Petter asked him how it went with men in these womanless regions. He remembered the little shoemaker in Stillwater who had looked with such longing at the women in their company. There was only one woman to each twenty men in the American wilderness; what did the men here do?

Jonas Petter put this question to Anders Månsson, but he looked away and answered only with an embarrassed grin. He was shy with people, especially with women; he had probably never touched a woman, Jonas Petter guessed. Fina-Kajsa had once asked her son, in the presence of all, why he hadn’t married yet. Anders Månsson had said nothing and had only grown redder in the face than he usually was.

Jonas Petter went on. He almost wished he had been turned into a woman here in America, as they were the only ones who needn’t sleep alone. Even Ulrika seemed to think she might get married out here; she had said she need only choose among the men ready for marriage.

“Well, why wouldn’t a man marry Ulrika?” Anders Månsson asked. “She is healthy and well shaped. How long since her last husband died?”

Jonas Petter and Karl Oskar exchanged glances: unmarried Ulrika of Västergöhl was taken for a widow here, as she had arrived without a husband but with a daughter. And here people might think whatever they wished, let them think her husband was dead. Ulrika herself had said, when questioned by Swedish Anna if her menfolk had died: Yes, of course her menfolk had died, all her menfolk had passed away from her forever, none would return, she had none left. And people in Taylors Falls now believed that Ulrika had been married and widowed many times, and none of her group would tell the truth about her carryings-on at home; all had agreed that everything discreditable that had happened in the land of Sweden, no matter whom it concerned, must be forgotten, buried, and lost in this new country.

Jonas Petter had almost let the cat out of the bag, but he saw Karl Oskar’s warning glance, and hastened to explain: Concerning Ulrika’s widowhood, he knew only what she herself had said—all her menfolk had left her forever, they were dead to her. And how long it was since the last one passed away, that Jonas Petter couldn’t say. But this much he knew: Ulrika was free and open to marriage.

Thus Jonas Petter avoided the truth without telling a lie.

Anders Månsson nodded and seemed satisfied with this information. Such an elegant and handsome woman as Ulrika, he said, would soon be married here in Minnesota Territory.