Waves of Mercy

by Lynn Austin

  But I think the lowest point came when Mrs. Willem Notting became seriously ill. She had traveled every step of the way from the Netherlands with us and was one of Mama’s closest friends. The hunger and exhaustion that affected all of us compounded her illness. In spite of our fervent prayers, Mrs. Notting died. As we dug the first grave in this unforgiving land, many of us wondered who would be next. And why God wasn’t listening.

  Our closest neighbors were the native Ottawa Indians, who lived on the shores of Black Lake not far from us. I had glimpsed them from a distance several times. The first time was when a group of braves stood outside the Old Wing Mission when we stopped there on our trip from Allegan. Later, Papa showed me their village of log buildings and huts clustered along the lakeshore. I stared at the squaws and their little ones in fascination and fear. Their way of life seemed so primitive, yet Reverend Smith from the mission assured us that the natives were Christians like us. Every now and then I’d glimpse one of their braves slipping between the trees outside our cabin like a shadow, familiar with the paths and forest trails that had once been theirs. But I had never encountered an Ottawa Indian up close until one night during our first winter in Holland, when we were all shaken from our sleep by a furious pounding on our door.

  Papa and the other men hurried to answer it while Maarten lit a lamp. When they opened the door, there stood an Indian brave armed with a rifle, leaning against our doorframe. His leather and fur clothing hung in tattered shreds soaked with blood. More blood ran down his face from deep gashes in his flesh. One of his arms was badly mangled. I quickly looked away from the gruesome sight. The brave was taller than Papa by several inches, but he fell forward into Papa’s arms, as if unable to stand a moment longer. The men lowered him to the floor in front of the hearth.

  A great commotion followed as Maarten stoked the fire and Mama and the other women hurried to tend his injuries. “From the look of these wounds, I’d say he encountered some sort of wild animal,” Papa said. Mama took needle and thread and stitched some of the worst of the gashes closed, while I helped prepare bandages and dressings.

  “Do you think he’ll live?” Maarten asked.

  “He’s in the Almighty’s hands,” Dominie replied, then he led the rest of us in prayer, beseeching God to spare the life of this man who had come to us for help.

  Eventually, I fell back to sleep. At dawn the Indian still lay beside the fire, moaning softly from time to time, but Papa and the other men were gone. They had decided to follow the bloody trail in the snow that the Indian had made to see if any more braves were in need of help. We were alone in the cabin with the injured man, but I could see that he was too badly hurt to do us any harm. He looked young, no older than Maarten, with black hair and high cheekbones and skin the rich color of mahogany. When the men returned, they were dragging the skin of a huge black bear with them.

  “It looks like this Indian fellow put a bullet into the creature,” Papa told us, “but the wounded bear must have attacked in return, putting up a savage fight before it died.”

  “The area where we found the bear was trampled and covered with blood,” Maarten added. “It looked like wolves and other scavengers got there before us during the night.”

  “If the Indian hadn’t made it to our door,” Papa said, “it’s likely the wolves would have killed him, too.”

  The Indian stayed with us for nearly two weeks until he was strong enough to be moved. A group of his people came for him, showering us with gifts of venison and hides to show their gratitude. I wasn’t quite as afraid of the Ottawa Indians after that, but I never got over my fear of bears! The incident underscored the dangers of this wilderness place, so different from the civilized world where I grew up in Leiden.

  At last the long winter ended and spring arrived. The snow melted, turning the ground into mud and marshland that was nearly as difficult to travel through as the snow had been. Living conditions slowly improved as more and more immigrants arrived to help us clear the land and build houses. More than forty people now lived in our little settlement. We held worship services outside in a clearing, sitting on logs for pews. I dutifully sang psalms of faith and praised God with the others each Sabbath day, hoping that my flagging spirits would revive, and praying that we would survive this ordeal. Things would be better when Hendrik came, I told myself—although the thought of him suffering hardship along with us filled me with guilt. Was it fair to ask him to make the long journey here for me, knowing the adversity he would face?

  “Maarten and I are going to choose a patch of land to buy today,” Papa told us one bright spring day. Mama and I and some of the other women were heading down to the creek to wash our filthy winter clothing and socks. We would hang the clean laundry on the still-bare branches to dry, hoping the wind didn’t blow them into the trampled mud that surrounded our communal cabin in every direction. “Once we find a place of our own,” Papa said, “we’ll build a log house and clear the land and—”

  “Wait! Are we going to move away from everyone else?” I asked in alarm. The forest was frightening enough in the company of the other settlers. I couldn’t imagine living all by ourselves, far from our nearest neighbors.

  “Of course we are, lieveling. Everyone wants a house and farmland to call his own. Dominie Van Raalte has arranged to purchase land from the State of Michigan, and he’s going to show us which lots are available to buy.”

  “Not near the Indians, Papa. Please!”

  “They mean us no harm, Geesje,” he said, chuckling. “Besides, their settlement is on the shores of Black Lake. I would like to live farther inland, where the center of town will be.”

  “Dominie says our community will have a newspaper one day,” Maarten added. “That means the town will need a printer.”

  I couldn’t imagine it. Nothing in this vast wilderness resembled a town. A newspaper was ludicrous. It would take years and years until we even came close to having the civilized life we left behind in Leiden and Arnhem.

  “What about wild animals?” I asked. “The women we stayed with in Allegan told me that bears and wolves and wildcats live in these woods.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about animals,” Maarten said. “The biggest danger is getting lost.” If his words were meant to comfort me, they didn’t. I watched the two of them set off, their wooden shoes sinking into the soft forest floor. They quickly disappeared, swallowed by the thick trees.

  Late that afternoon, the last of our laundry was finally dry, and Mama and I took it down from the tree branches. “Look at this,” Mama said, wiggling her finger through a hole in one of Papa’s woolen socks. “Nearly every pair of socks we own has a hole or two that needs to be patched. We’ll have mending to do this evening.”

  “Maarten’s are even worse than Papa’s.” I showed her one with the heel completely worn away. “But where will we get yarn to mend them? Or to knit new ones?”

  “We’ll manage, Geesje,” she replied with a smile. Mama steadfastly refused to be discouraged no matter our circumstances. I often wondered if she truly had that much faith in God and in our future here, or if she was merely pretending to in order to keep up our spirits. “We can always unravel one of the worst ones and use the yarn from it to fix the others,” she said.

  “We need a lot of other supplies, too, besides yarn,” I grumbled. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt full after eating a meal.

  “How spoiled we were back in the Netherlands,” Mama said. “How mindlessly we took it all for granted. Maybe God is teaching us to be more thankful for all His gifts to us.”

  Papa and Maarten retuned before sunset, telling tales of the wonderful plot of land they had decided to purchase. I shook my head at them. “How can you tell if it’s wonderful? The forest looks exactly the same in every direction—just trees, trees, and more trees.”

  “We chose a piece of land on slightly higher ground, away from the marsh,” Maarten told me. “It has a stand of pine trees we can use to
build a sturdy cabin, and a good-sized area we can clear for a garden.” His excitement made him more talkative than usual, and as he described the land we would soon own, I saw Maarten as if for the first time in months. Now that he was no longer swaddled in winter clothes, I realized how thin he had become over the winter. His once-sturdy body and large, square hands had shriveled until it seemed that his bones were about to poke through his skin. His round face looked sunken and pale. Did I also look that thin and pale? It was hard to tell without a proper mirror.

  Mama was beaming at the news. “This is what we’ve waited for, worked for, and come all this way for—land of our own.”

  “Is it far away from everyone else?” I asked. “You were gone all day.”

  “No, lieveling,” Papa said, patting my shoulder. “It isn’t far at all. A short walk from here. About the distance from our shop in Leiden to your sister Geerde’s house—maybe a little farther.” But of course there wouldn’t be paved streets to walk on to get there or shops to peek into along the way. We wouldn’t pass a single soul we could greet or stop and chat with for a while. We couldn’t watch the clouds chase across the blue expanse of sky above the river since our view would be blocked by a dense thicket of tree branches that barely let in the sunshine. And once we arrived, Geerde and her children wouldn’t be there to welcome us.

  “The reason we were gone all day,” Maarten explained, “is because we spent the afternoon cutting marks on the trees so we could find our property again—and so no one else would claim it.”

  “When can we move there?” Mama asked. “Shall I start packing our things?”

  What things? I wanted to ask. Our hole-filled socks? Our threadbare coats? Our dented pots and chipped plates? We had so very little to call our own.

  “Maarten and I need to build some sort of shelter or lean-to, first,” Papa said. “It should only take us a few days. Then we can all move there together.”

  The first temporary hut Papa constructed out of tree branches was so flimsy that water poured inside every time it rained. And it rained a lot that spring. The woods were very dark, especially at night, and filled with terrifying sounds—trees moaning in the wind, owls hooting, insects whirring and buzzing, coyotes howling. It was very frightening to a city girl like me. I cried myself to sleep at night, shivering beneath my damp blanket and wishing I had defied my parents and run away to Utrecht to marry Hendrik.

  Then—a miracle! Maarten walked to the town of Allegan for some much-needed food supplies one day and returned with a letter from Hendrik, the first one I had received since leaving home more than six months ago. He had sent it to our boardinghouse in Detroit, and they had kindly forwarded it to the home where we had stayed in Allegan. At last, at last, it had made its way to me! I went into our hut by myself to open it. What if Hendrik had found someone else by now? What if he’d decided he didn’t want to make the long journey to America after all, and I never saw him again? After all these months, I could barely picture his handsome face or remember how it felt when we’d kissed. I began to read, trying to see his words through my tears.

  My darling Geesje,

  It has been months and months since I’ve seen your beautiful face or held you in my arms. I miss you so much! I can’t even imagine how far away you are or comprehend the huge distance that now separates us, but please know that I still hold you very close in my heart. I have been receiving all your wonderful letters and waiting for the day when I could send one to you in return. At last, that day has come.

  As I’ve read your letters I’ve felt as though I was traveling with you that long, long way. What an adventure you are having! I am envious of all the places you’ve been and the things you’ve seen and the people you’ve met. Meanwhile, my life here in Utrecht has been very routine and boring. I’ve been unable to attend services in any church, let alone a Separatist one, and I sometimes fear that I will forget all of the things Maarten taught me. It’s very hard to be a soldier in a city like Utrecht with its many temptations, but I am trying to remain strong for your sake. You are such a pure, God-fearing woman, and you deserve to marry a man whose faith is as strong as yours. I know I have much to learn before I am that man, but I hope you will be patient and willing to teach me when we are together at last.

  The good news is that I will be discharged from the army at the end of the summer. I’ve been saving all of my money for the passage to America and I hope to have some left over to buy land. Does it really cost only $1.25 an acre? I want to buy acres and acres for you! I contacted the emigrant aid society you mentioned about the possibility of joining with some other Dutch families who are going to America in the fall, and they assured me that it won’t be difficult to do. Dozens of Dutch families are making plans to move to America because of the famine and the lack of jobs here.

  Soon, Geesje. Soon the distance between us will disappear, and we will be together again. My love for you hasn’t diminished in the least. I hope that yours for me hasn’t, either.

  I love you with all my heart.

  Hendrik

  His letter made me ashamed of my whining attitude during all our hardships and of my lack of faith. Hendrik called me a God-fearing woman, but after reading his letter I felt like a hypocrite. How could I dare to teach him the things he longed to know about God and about living by faith when I had set such a poor example all these months? I knew I needed to change. The following Sunday, I confessed all my sins to God and asked forgiveness for my selfishness and grumbling lack of faith. Then I joined in all the hard work with a new attitude and sense of commitment. Together, my family and Maarten and I cleared enough land to plant a garden. We finished building our tiny cabin, filling the cracks between the logs with mud to keep out the wind and rain, and cutting shingles out of bark for the roof.

  A few weeks after Hendrik’s first letter arrived, I received a second one from him, brought from Allegan by one of the Dutch families who had stayed behind in Albany, New York. They were finally rejoining us. Hendrik had received my letter about our decision to settle in Michigan instead of Wisconsin. He would be able to find me here! And he now had firm plans to travel with a group of Dutch settlers leaving from Rotterdam in October. By the time he arrived, more than a year would have passed since we last saw each other. But I could endure any hardship now, knowing that Hendrik was coming. He was coming! And I was receiving letters from him again. My spirits soared. I tried to remain cheerful even when the deer and squirrels and chipmunks and quill pigs invaded our newly planted garden and ate our crops faster than we could grow them. And when the foxes made a meal of Mama’s new chickens, just when we were starting to get fresh eggs to eat.

  Later that first summer, the men began building a log church so we would have a place to worship when the cold winter months returned. They chose a patch of high ground, up the hill from Dominie Van Raalte’s home on the creek. Land surveyors arrived and plotted the streets of our future town, nestled between Black Lake and a bend in the swampy Black River. River Avenue would run north and south, parallel to the lake shore. Cross streets were given numbers for names—First Street, Second Street, and so on. A market square was planned where people could gather together someday to buy and sell their goods. Someone had started calling our settlement Holland, after our homeland, and the name stuck. New settlements with Dutch names like Graafschap and Zeeland were sprouting up all around us. But these ambitious plans still seemed very far in the future to me. The woods surrounding us remained forbidding, the tiny cabins few and far between, the roads nonexistent. When Hendrik finally did arrive six long months from now, he would see nothing resembling a civilized town. Even so, I remained optimistic throughout that summer, and filled with faith for our future, trusting in a loving, benevolent God.

  And then the rains came, and with them swarms of mosquitos. . . .

  Holland, Michigan

  1897

  I pause when I see the mailman coming with a letter for me. We chat for a minute before he continues o
n his way, wiping sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. I look down at the return address on the letter, and my stomach does a slow, sickening turn. It’s from my nephew in Leiden. He has never written to me before. I delay opening it, walking to my kitchen and making myself a cup of tea, first. If it is bad news, I can postpone facing it for a few minutes longer. If someone has died, they will remain alive to me until I read it in black and white.

  When I finally slit open the envelope, the letter does contain tragic news. My sister Anneke has passed away. She and I have kept in touch these past fifty years, knowing that we would never see each other again on this side of heaven. Now she has gone to paradise ahead of me. I let my tears fall as I absorb yet another loss, added to the many I’ve endured over the years. The number of loved ones waiting for me on heaven’s shore has become quite a multitude.

  I can’t write any more today. My grief is too great.

  Chapter 15

  Anna

  Hotel Ottawa

  1897