The Settlers

by Vilhelm Moberg

  The four men wandered about for hours; they hesitated in a number of places; they discussed the location, examined the soil, speculated on roads to the place, compared one spot with another, deliberated, weighed arguments. But they continued their walk, continued to seek. As yet they had not gone far from the shores of the great lake.

  They reached a promontory which cut into Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, and stopped again. The point comprised about five acres. On the lakeside it ended in steep sandstone cliffs to the water. It was heavily wooded with deciduous trees, silver maples predominating. The sugar maple provided the settlers with sugar and syrup and it was a harder wood than the other maples, but the silver maple was more beautiful, friendlier. It was in some way a sociable tree: the settlers preferred the silver maple above all other leaf trees. On this promontory hazel, hawthorn, and walnut also grew in profusion. A level place in the center was overgrown with sumac, cheerful with its red blossoms. The opening with its sumac was like a furnished room in the forests house. And the steep cliffs formed nature’s own protection, fencing in the point with a wall of stone.

  The four stayed a long time examining the point. Their conviction grew stronger and stronger. They need seek no farther. They had arrived. This was truly a resting place for human beings.

  They sat down in the shade of a wide-spreading silver maple, leaning their backs against the trunk of the tree. It was comfortingly calm in this elevated grove, isolated by the lake on three sides. They looked at the blossoming ground, they squinted toward the sky, out over the water. No heathen graves lay within sight. This was the home of quietude. The June day’s perfection and the absence of wind increased the great stillness of the place. The leaves of the silver maples glistened in the sun, the gentle surf was a faint, peaceful purl against the boulders below the stone wall. This point had already been fenced to the north, south, and west by the lake, fenced by the Creator himself when on the third day he separated land and water.

  The four men listened to the soft wind and to the purling water; here sitting under the silver maples people could enjoy a momentary rest, and later that longer repose which at last would succeed this earthly life. This was a resting place for both the living and the dead.

  The men held a short deliberation, after which they agreed that they would advise the new parish to have the ground on this beautiful point near Ki-Chi-Saga consecrated as a burying place for their dead.

  Once the men had chosen their last resting place they sat for a long while, preoccupied. Within themselves each posed a question. It was a question that could not be answered by what they could hear or see, it could not be answered by any human being—it arose and made itself felt of its own volition who would be the first to lie in his grave here on this point? Who would be first to rest under the silver maples?

  Would it be a man or a woman, a child or an adult, young or old? The shareholders in this, the burial plot they had selected, were mostly people in their youth or blooming prime, but none among them had any promise of the morrow. Life in this country offered so little security and so many dangers that only a few could hope to die in bed, full of years.

  Perhaps one of them, one of the four who today rested in the future parish cemetery, might be the first to lie under the silver maples.

  Four human beings sat at the site of their last destination in life’s journey. Wherever their steps led them in this world, here their wandering would finally cease. However much they strove, whatever they undertook—they would eventually be carried to this plot of ground on the lakeshore. During their wandering today they had been reminded anew of the old truth, the truth they had learned from those who had gone before them, the truth they felt shudderingly, deep in their soul: they were of the earth and inexorably chained to the earth. The four men resting in the shade of the silver maples belonged to the turf under their feet. And today they had searched out their own turf of death.

  And now having finished their search in the forest and having taken their rest, the seekers rose and returned to the life which still remained to them.

  XI

  THE LETTER TO SWEDEN

  New Duvemåla at Taylors Falls Post

  Office in Minnesota, North America,

  Christmas Day, 1854.

  Dearly Beloved Parents,

  Hope you are Well is my Daily Wish.

  I want to write to let you know that various things are well with us. We have health and since I last wrote nothing of weight has happened to us.

  Last October we moved into our new Main House which has two storys. It is built of timbers which I have rough hewn by hand on both sides. In this building we have plenty of room, it is warm also and lacks nothing.

  Concerning my situation in North America it is improving right along. I have this fall paid for my whole land at the landoffis, 200 hundred dollar for 160 acres. I have broken new land three times as large as Korpamoen and fensed in about 300 yards, one yard equals 3 Swedish feet. I have four cows in the stable and 3 young livestock in pens. I have cut a pair of Bull Calfs which I raise for oxes. In America no one reaches Comfort in one day but we are satisfied with our improvement.

  We have now built up a school house in our Parish. Johan and Marta go to school and learn various subjects from Books, English also. We pay for a pastor in our Parish with 65 dollar a year and free fire wood. Sometimes he travels to other Settlements and Preaches. Here is much disagreement in Religion. But the Pastor can not exclude anyone from the Parish or from the Sacrament, but two thirds of the parishioners can fire the pastor from his job.

  We shall this winter select a Swedish justice of the Peace among us. But there is not much Authority here and I like that well. Here in America the Officials are appointed as servants to attend to their duties. When they do not attend to their job other Officials are put in their place. It is not like in Sweden. They have a perverted Government at home. Sweden has too many lazy dogs to feed who do not wish to work.

  I think it is sad for you to sit alone. Is it cold in your room in winter? Have you enough wood for fires—I wish I could send you some of the wood we have here in abundance.

  I got apple seeds from Duvemåla which I planted and a sapling has grown up but it will take time I reckon before the tree has fruit. Around the new house Kristina made a flower bed and I have planted 5 Cherrys and 12 Goosberrys and wine berries and some places for strawberries which will bear next summer.

  It is Christmas Day today and I have taken the whole day off to write to Sweden. I remember the Christmas games at home, but the joyful and happy mind of a youth is no longer mine; it is hard to claim wild land and I feel it in the Body although not yet Old. I do not hop about on my feet as lightly as in my youth.

  It would be a Joy to come home to you once more in Life and sit down at the old table and cut slices of the Christmas Pig, like in my childhood days.

  Many days have now passed since I offered you my hand in farewell and left a dear Childhood home. I apologize if I have been slow in writing and write so seldom. I am thinking every day I must write but always delay.

  Immeasurable Seas separate us but Daily I have my dear Parents in my thoughts, and my letters to Sweden shall not cease.

  You are greeted heartily from your relations in a far-off land. Greetings also to my dear sister Lydia and ask her to write to her brother in North America, if Fathers Hands do tremble.

  Your devoted Son

  Karl Oskar Nilsson.

  Part Two

  Gold and Water

  XII

  THE MARCH OF THE HUNDRED THOUSAND

  If it be romance, if it be contrast,

  if it be heroism that we require,

  what was Troy town to this?

  —Robert Louis Stevenson

  Across the Plains

  About the middle of the nineteenth century, an immense river of human beings pushed its way across North America, from the east toward the west. It was formed in the springtime, from smaller streams and rivulets, at the frontier outp
osts in Missouri and Kansas and from there streamed over wild and unknown country, across great deserts and salt marshes, over the prairies’ grass and the Rocky Mountains’ snow, over flat land and high mesas, uphill, downhill. Its path—two thousand miles long—was called the California Trail—but the name was all that existed; it had been given to a trail that was yet to be defined and mapped.

  Over a path that was everywhere and nowhere, the March of the Hundred Thousand pushed on, from spring to autumn. Its goal was the furthermost western country, washed by an ocean greater than the one crossed by the millions of immigrants.

  This train was made up of the strangest conglomeration of people that had ever traveled two thousand unknown, uncleared miles together. It was a caravan never before seen, and never to be seen again.

  Men and women, married and unmarried; babes in cradles strung inside the covered ox wagons; old people with trembling limbs. There were proud, honorable women in homespun wadmal, harlots in silk and frills. There were religious people, and atheists. Pious and upright men and women, noble and high-minded people, murderers and robbers, degraded criminals of both sexes. Puritans and libertines, celibates and rapists, the young girl with her virginity intact and the whore who opened her arms to a thousand men. There were thieves and card sharks, counterfeiters and practitioners of every vice known to the world. There were farm hands and maids who had fled from service, soldiers from their regiments, prisoners from their jails, seamen from their ships, mental patients from their asylums, men who had run away from their wives and wives from their husbands, children from their parents, and officials from their posts and positions. There were truthful people and liars, bright people and simpletons, people with normal minds and people a little off. The healthy people and the sick, giants and dwarfs, well-shaped and deformed; one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed, limping ones, seeing and half-blind; all these God-created creatures could be found in this train, in the train of the hundred thousand.

  They came from every land on earth, and spoke all the dialects and languages of the earth. This caravan was humanity’s parade in white, black, brown, and yellow; whites and Negroes, Hindus and Chinese, fullbloods, half-bloods, quadroons, the bluest noble blood and the rawest plebeian dregs.

  Workers in all trades took off and joined this strange caravan: the carpenter threw away his plane, the timberman his ax, the smith his sledge hammer, the cobbler his last, the baker his spatula, the cook his spoon, the scrivener his pen. They streamed in from all nations: there rode in his ox wagon the English merchant, the Irish lawyer, there rode on his mule the American preacher and surgeon; the Jewish peddler kept whipping his ox. In the train were the Spanish captain, the Italian monk, the Norwegian forester, the German craftsman, and the Swedish farm hand.

  In the caravan traveled, side by side the nobleman and the servant, the high officer and the low soldier, the editor and the actor, the singer and the player, the magician and the circus-performer, the ventriloquist and the snake charmer, the fire eater and the tight-rope dancer, the master marksman with the revolver and the man who had never touched a firearm. In their rucksacks, in their wagons or saddlebags, they hid what they held dearest in this world, objects they least wished to part with: the most diversified objects a human heart can cling to: Bibles and decks of cards, holy pictures and dirty pictures, canary birds in cages, whelps in baskets, gifts from parents and dear ones, knives, sewing baskets, crochet hooks, swingletrees, psalmbooks, songbooks, musical instruments, belts, clocks, rings, and amulets.

  And an immense animal caravan accompanied the train intended as sacrifice for the people: in the train of the hundred thousand were 60,000 oxen, pulling 15,000 wagons, 25,000 horses and 10,000 mules who carried people on their backs. Four-legged creatures in the train supplied the two-legged with food and drink: 10,000 cows gave them milk twice a day, and a herd of 5,000 sheep gave them mutton and chops which sizzled with delicious odor over the evening campfires.

  The train over the plains and deserts was accompanied by song and music—the musical instruments for religious services as well as those for idle play were brought along. Solemn tunes were heard from mouthorgans and psalmodikons, and dance tunes vibrated from fiddles and banjos. Hallowed psalms were sung to the guitar, and lewd songs to the harmonica, strings were strummed for prayer and reverence, while sin was lauded and debauchery acclaimed. Ministers and blasphemers held their services, and their voices and words rose to the same heaven, that lofty, indifferent heaven above the California Trail.

  But these hundred thousand people of all nationalities and colors, speaking all languages, confessing all faiths, practicing all means of livelihood, indulging in all vices, consisting of all types, with all character traits, had one thing in common: the Goal. It was the goal that united the members in this folkwandering, the strangest migration ever to take place on the earth. It had forced them to leave their homes in widely separated countries and continents and had brought them together in civilization’s outposts in North America from where the caravan started. It drove them across prairies and deserts, over mountains and plains, over rivers and marshes, and made them endure the desert-heat and the mountain-cold. Any one unable to move forward on this road was also unable to turn back; there remained only to stay in the place and await the final end. The cowards, the cringers, had remained at home, and the weakest had been weeded out before horses’ or mules’ hoofs had taken a single step toward the west.

  So the train pushed on, along the unblazed trail that was only a name, enduring the heat of the fiery sun, resting under the vaulted, starry night sky, through the days and months, from spring to fall. Only a dream could unite this human horde, and before the train of the hundred thousand there moved as guidance, day and night, a mirage, a pillar of fire: gold! It was their common goal: GOLD! It was the end of the road that united them: The Land of Gold!

  And broad was the land and unmeasured, long was the road, and without end, greatminded and daring the participants, and immeasurable their dreams.

  The Gold Caravan traveled every year, from spring to fall, over the California Trail, but it happened that two out of three who followed its pillar of fire never reached their goal.

  XIII

  A YOUTH WHO IS NOT YOUNG

  —1—

  One June evening as Karl Oskar Nilsson made his way through his field, hoeing his corn, he saw a stranger approaching along the lakeshore. A tall, stooped man with a rucksack on his back came toward him, jerking along and swinging his arms as he climbed the road up to the old log cabin. He veered off toward the maple grove, walking as if he had no command over his tall, loose body. Then he stopped and looked at the new main house under the great sugar maples.

  Karl Oskar rested against the hoe, staring at the man. During their first years on the claim they had barely had one visitor a month, now someone came almost every day. But this man was not one of their neighbors. And the stranger looked from one building to the other as if he had lost his way. When he saw Karl Oskar in the cornfield, he turned and walked in that direction.

  He was a gaunt young man, and judging from his clothing he must be a fur trapper. He wore a broad hat, a long black-and-white-checked coat, and a hunting shirt of flaming red flannel. His pants were made of deerskin, held up by a broad yellow leather belt; his snug leggings fit into high boots. He was a skinny man; his clothes seemed too big for him, hanging on his body as they did.

  To Karl Oskar the strangers walk reminded him of his brother Robert. But he was taller than Robert, and as he came closer Karl Oskar could not discern any likeness to his brother.

  It must be someone who had lost his way and wanted to inquire about directions.

  “Hello, Karl Oskar!”

  The farmer stood openmouthed with the hoe in his hand: a stranger, in strange clothing, with a strange face, in a hoarse voice he had never heard before, called him by name.

  “Don’t you recognize your brother, Karl Oskar?”

  Could it be possible that someon
e was trying to pretend to be the brother who had left for California four years before?

  “I’m back from the California Trail!”

  The evening was still light; Karl Oskar peered more closely at the newcomer, looked him in the eye, and began to recognize him, feeling rather than seeing who it was. His younger brother, Robert, was standing in front of him.

  Slowly, almost hesitantly, Karl Oskar put down his hoe and offered his hand: “Back at last! Welcome, Robert!”

  “Thanks, Karl Oskar. Didn’t you recognize . . . ?”

  “Well, you’ve grown taller. And changed!”

  It was the height that had confused him; Robert had grown several inches—that was only natural, he had been gone four years. But the clothes; he had left in his old Swedish wadmal, and now he returned dressed like an American trapper. The greatest change, however, was in his face. When Karl Oskar had last seen his brother’s face it had been round and full with only the first down of a beard and still with a childish softness in its contours. Now his cheeks were cavernous, bones protruding under the scabby, pale-yellow skin which looked as if worms had gnawed it. Deep, dark gray furrows underlined his eyes. It was a ravished youth-face he now saw. And when Robert smiled, black holes from missing front teeth appeared.

  Robert had been eighteen when he set out. Now he was twenty-two. He was still young but he looked old.