The Settlers

by Vilhelm Moberg

  Under the speculators’ hands, land quickly rose in value. The price of a lot might double overnight. Claims were staked out with feverish haste: “Take what you can, and take the best!” The man who came yesterday obtained a better piece than the one who arrived today. The speculators sold their land and bought more, farther west, which in turn was sold when it was time to raise the price. Those who handled paper became rich on the backs of those who handled the heavy tools of labor. Money men grew rich, while the ax- and plowmen remained poor.

  Exploiters and exploited have existed in all countries in all times. This was a country and a time for one who saw the opportunities, for one who was handy with paper.

  Minnesota Territory had been established in 1849, and its blossoming during the next seven years was amazing and without precedent. Everything rose in value, all kinds of objects—including the solid ground—were sold and bought, money was abundant, and new stacks of bills were issued as required. There was immeasurable prosperity in the country.

  But what was the foundation for this great prosperity?

  The foundation can be found in the story of Rolling Stone.

  —2—

  After the prosperous years came the year 1857.

  It began with a disturbing occurrence in the East: New York banks closed. This crash quickly spread westward; the Chicago banks toppled. By the autumn of 1857 it had reached Minnesota—St. Paul and Stillwater. The banks in these towns closed. People who had been rich in the morning were destitute before the sun set. People with no property except money were penniless. The paper bills no longer had any value. There was no gold and no reliable bills, no acceptable currency. No one could buy without money, and no one could sell. Business came to a standstill.

  New bills, warrants, and scrips were issued by the authorities; these would take the place of currency but were accepted with suspicion, and soon were worth only half the printed value. The people in the Territory had lost their confidence in bills.

  What could money be used for when it was no longer trusted? What could money men do without money? The speculator’s twilight was at hand; the great revolution in money matters swept them from the Territory; those who had hoped to get rich by buying and selling had nothing more to gain here. The great horde of speculators, brokers, and jobbers left Minnesota. In one year St. Paul’s population dropped by four thousand.

  The farmers had for a time been eclipsed by real estate speculators. With the upheaval of ’57 a threatening danger to those settlers who had come to make their homes in the Territory was removed. It was the money men who now were pushed out, while the ax- and plow-men remained in possession of the earth.

  And the future state of Minnesota was to be built by those who remained.

  —3—

  During 1855 and 1856 the weather had been favorable for the crops, and the fields at Duvemåla, in Chisago Township, had brought good harvests. Each fall, as soon as Karl Oskar had done his threshing, he noted down in the old almanac the number of bushels harvested. And in the fall of 1856, recording his sixth harvest in America, he looked back at the earlier figures. He saw that his crop this year was half again as great as last year, and his corn alone had brought him ten times as many bushels as his first year’s crop. Now he was planting the Indian grain on a quarter of his fields; corn might give up to forty bushels per acre and wheat was almost as generous in the deep soil. These new grains were blessed in their growth. And from the figures in his almanac he could follow the improvement on his claim from year to year.

  But the following year was to be a year of adversity. Already in spring a severe drought set in which lasted the better part of the summer. The crops withered before they headed. The corn was best able to withstand the persistent drought but the other crops were a failure. Then, about harvesttime, came the locust plague. There had been no grasshoppers in Minnesota since 1849, and the settlers were in hopes they would never return. One day, however, they appeared in immense, ravenous swarms. Like a rain of living black-gray drops they fell over the earth. These repulsive creatures showed an unbelievable hunger, unlike the hunger of other creatures. They consumed everything green in their path, and in their wake left only the black earth behind them.

  While these ravages took place, the legislature in St. Paul offered a bounty of five cents a bushel for grasshoppers. Johan and Marta earned two dollars each for catching them. Governor Ramsey proclaimed a day of prayer in the churches against the locust plague, and the authorities also urged the observation of a fast day against the disaster. Few listened to this; the settlers felt they would probably have to starve enough during the winter after the hoppers had eaten their crops.

  In Chisago Township the hopper plague was less severe than in other parts of the Territory, but Karl Oskar’s crop was still only a quarter of the previous years. Fortunately, having something left of the old harvest they could manage to get along through the winter.

  Then in the late fall of this memorable year came the currency catastrophe.

  Karl Oskar had already learned that money was nothing but paper. During 1857, many others were to share his bitter experience; they were stuck with bills the banks could not redeem. During the last years wildcat money from banks in Wisconsin and Nebraska had also been circulating in Minnesota. Few were the settlers who hadn’t one time or another been fooled into exchanging a load of grain or a fatted hog for worthless bills. And thousands of gullible settlers who had trusted the sly wildcats found themselves destitute, their faith in paper money gone. This worthless paper ruler was dethroned. The frosty fall wind of ‘57 blew away the speculators who exchanged land plots as Gypsies exchanged horses.

  How hadn’t Karl Oskar’s anger been stirred by these parasites! They were like the rats that fed off the grain and food in the cellar; however well they guarded and hid their food they could still see the teeth-marks or the dung of these pests. “If you won’t eat where I bit, you must eat where I shit,” the rat seemed to say. And it was not easy to separate its droppings from grain and flour bins; with cats, poison, and traps he had tried to rid himself of the vermin. And here were these other thieves the settlers must feed—the speculators, humanity’s rats who grew fat on the crops others had harvested for them. It was more important to root them out than it was to destroy the pests in the granaries and cellars.

  The great money upheaval—as long as it lasted—freed the country of them, but, like the rats, they left dung behind. The settlers had a difficult time when business came to a standstill; they couldn’t sell anything, no one had the money to buy. For his grain and pork Karl Oskar would accept nothing but gold or good bills, and neither were available this fall. Thus he was without cash for the purchases he wanted to make. And when he occasionally could sell anything for sound cash, the price offered was pitifully low. Pork was down to two cents a pound; after fattening a hog for half a year until it finally weighed two hundred pounds he received four dollars for his labor. He might as well lie down on his earth and kick himself.

  But Karl Oskar grew neither poorer nor richer during 1857. What did it concern him that the banks tumbled? He didn’t have a penny in them. His claim was his possession, and the fields lay where they had always been. For months on end they didn’t have a coin in the house, but they had a roof over their heads, heat from the stove, bread, milk, butter, eggs, pork to eat. What did it concern them that money had disappeared? They had a home and food.

  Karl Oskar had come as a squatter to his claim, one of the wooden-shoe people from Sweden. Other settlers in the Territory, with more elegant shoes, had often looked down on and pitied the poor squatter who must make his own shoes from the wood of the forest. But the man in the wooden shoes sat safe and comfortable on his claim after seven years, while thousands of other settlers became destitute in the great depression of 1857.

  Each fall since Karl Oskar had got his own team, he had broken at least five new acres of the vast meadow below his house. By now he could look out on thirty acres. Next
spring he would seed four times as much land as he had owned in Korpamoen, and this land was three times as fertile as his old farm. In favorable years he now harvested larger crops than any farmer in Ljuder parish.

  He liked to sit at the window and look out at his fields; this was the land he had changed. When he came the whole meadow had been covered with weeds and wild grass. Now it produced rye, wheat, oats, corn, potatoes, turnips. The wild grass had fed elk, deer, and rabbits; now the field yielded so much there was enough for them as well as for other people. And it was his hands that had held the plow handles when this fertile earth was wrested from the wilderness. The cultivation was his work and no one else’s, it was the labor of his own hands.

  If he should call his clearing his own created work, Kristina would undoubtedly say that he boasted and call him arrogant. A creator, to her, was only one who could make something out of nothing, and only one could do that, the Omnipotent himself: he had created the fertile field at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga on the third day of the creation, when he bade all water gather into one place under the heavens so that dry land appeared. Yet he, Karl Oskar Nilsson, sought his sustenance from the earth and had changed it so that it would give bread to people even after him. Couldn’t he at least consider himself a handyman to the creator?

  Kristina was intimate with the Almighty and always trusted him. But Karl Oskar could not be like her in this trusting. Ever since the years of adversity at home in Korpamoen he had been suspicious of God’s help. Whatever a person did, he couldn’t be absolutely sure of God’s aid in his enterprise. He himself had been forced to trust himself and his own strength. Our Lord let the crops grow, but how many grains would he have harvested if he hadn’t cleared the land, plowed and sown? Who would have tilled the field for him if he hadn’t done it himself for himself? Could it be sinful arrogance in him to look out over his fields and feel: this is the creation of my own hands!

  And he would continue his work; he would clear wider fields, raise more cattle, cut down more trees in the forest, and build bigger houses. He would from day to day improve his claim until he was no longer able to do so. Soon enough his arms would grow old and tired.

  To struggle on, each day in turn, to feel and use the strength he had—that was a settler’s lot and purpose in life.

  XXVIII

  THE LETTER FROM SWEDEN

  Åkerby at Ljuder parish, August 16

  Anno 1857

  Beloved Brother Karl Oskar Nilsson:

  The Lord’s Peace and Blessing upon you.

  I am about to write you a message of Sorrow. Tears of bereavement are falling as I pen these lines. Our Father, Nils Jakobsson, parted this life the 4th inst. and He was brought to the earth in the Parish Churchyard the 11th inst. His life’s span amounted to Sixty-two years and a few months. He suffered a long deathbed but did not Complain. Our new pastor gave him the Sacrament three days before he died, he managed to put himself in order for the pastor and combed his Hair himself.

  It was Our Father’s wish to pass on and have Peace. He had some fever attacks and dizziness toward the last and his mind wandered. The last Night he mentioned you and Robert in North America, he heard your wagon drive out of the yard on your journey to America and he rose from his pillow and said Now they are leaving. He said few words in life after that.

  We must all one day pale in Death. Our strength will not suffice against Him. But there is much to do when He is a guest in the house. We are settling the estate and I ask you to send me your power of Attorney, then we need not have an auction after our Father. Send also an attest that our Brother Robert is dead and then we won’t need a Power of Attorney from Him.

  We are in good health in our family except that I have a boil on a finger of my right hand. I have a kind husband, we have now 2 sons and 1 daughter. I have forgotten how many children you have, Write and tell us. I guess you’ve forgotten the people hereabouts—Dean Brusander is dead, he had a stroke in the Sacristy Whitsuntide morning, he asked about you a few years ago when he Baptized our oldest boy.

  Mother greets you as she can’t write to you herself. Our Mother is getting old and worn-out—when our strength is gone all joy is over.

  It is not easy to write down my thoughts on paper, I am poor in composition, excuse my poor spelling. Don’t forget us in your new Homeland. God Bless you, Brother, and hope your success continues.

  Written down by your devoted Sister

  Lydia Karlsson

  XXIX

  THE LETTER TO SWEDEN

  New Duvemåla at Taylors Falls Post ofis

  North America, October 3 Anno 1857

  Beloved Sister Lydia Karlsson,

  Your letter received, I could not help but shed a few tears as I held it in my hand and read that our Father had passed through the Valley of Death. I mourn him here, far from His bier.

  I had hoped to see Him once More, I had a good Father but was not always an obedient Son at Home. I feel though that Father forgave me my emigration, I did the best for my Own, our Father couldn’t think anything else.

  Now my Father is in that Land where I no longer can reach Him. Peace over his Grave and Remains. Yes, Death mowes his sharp scythe and makes no exception among us. When He comes we must go with him, whether we want to or not. I am however, glad that Father had one of his children with him as a comfort on his Deathbed.

  My kind parents looked well after me when I grew up but out here in my new land I have been of little Help or comfort to them.

  I enclose a paper which assures you that you my beloved Sister Lydia Karlsson shall have my inheritance after my demised Father Nils Jakobsson. You shall have my share for looking after Our Mother as long as She is in Time. I believe it cannot be a large sum of money.

  We have lately had some trouble with money matters in America but it is getting better. Many people have moved in from Sweden this last Summer and they are still coming daily. Even from Ljuder Parish people have come to this Valley. I see that the Dean is Gone, how did he like it that his parishioners followed me to North America? But he couldn’t blame me, I like the land here but have never boasted in order to lure people here from Sweden. I urge no man to emigrate; each one must do so at his own risk.

  The number of our children is 6 up to date, if I haven’t written this before. Our youngest is a strapping son, we call him Frank, it is an American name. He runs and plays on the floor, He was one year last February, the little American let go his hold and walked by himself 14 Days before he was a full year. Our Children have grown fast in their new Homeland it’s a Joy for us to see.

  I enclose my dear Greeting to our Mother. I know you take good care of her. You are my beloved Sister and we must write each other more often. Before each Day reaches its end I have some thought here in America for my old Home,

  Your Devoted Brother

  Karl Oskar Nilsson

  XXX

  KARL OSKAR’S FOLLOWERS

  —1—

  They had seeded and planted and harvested and threshed this year as all other years, but the weather had been unfavorable and contrary at all seasons. In the fall came a flood; it began as a sudden shower, but the shower lasted a week, two weeks. The rain did not fall in drops, it streamed down in sheets. Days on end it hung outside the window like a striped curtain. No settler had ever seen such a persistent rain in Minnesota. The autumn sowing was delayed because of the wet weather, and the rye did not begin to sprout until the winter frost had gone into the ground.

  On one of these long days, when the rain prevented all outside work, the Lutheran pastor came to call. A memorable rainy night four years earlier Pastor Erland Törner had come to the settlement at Duvemåla for the first time. This rainy day he came on a last visit—he had come to say goodbye.

  There had long been rumors that he wanted to leave the Swedish congregation in the St. Croix Valley, and now they were confirmed by his own words: he had accepted the call as pastor to the new church in Rockford, a new town down in Illinois, where there was a
sizable Swedish colony. He was going to get married and this had influenced his decision to leave. He was engaged to a Swedish girl in Rockford and she wanted to remain in her hometown after her marriage.

  Before the pastor arrived, Kristina had felt her nose itch and she had sneezed three times in succession, a sure sign that important callers would arrive. But the minister’s visit today was of little joy to her, as he had come to say farewell to them.

  He was no longer the pale, spindly young man who had warmed himself before the fire in their old log house, dressed like a scarecrow in Karl Oskar’s roomy clothes. Since then he had put on weight and his body was firmer; his face was weatherbeaten and his looks rugged. The hard life of traveling about in the wilderness had left its mark on him so that now the young pastor could be taken for a settler. And his life was not unlike that of his fellow countrymen.

  During the first two years they had gathered for services in the schoolhouse; only last year had the new church been ready for use. Since then Kristina had failed to attend services only four or five times: if a child lay sick or if she herself lay in childbed. Karl Oskar and she had also attended the Sacrament each time the Holy Supper was given. Pastor Törner’s sermons had been a comfort to her soul; they had quieted her anxiety and helped her overcome her worries about eternal damnation. This minister did not enter the pulpit like a stern judge—he was a mild gospel preacher, on equal footing with the sinners. He did not wish to judge anyone, he only wanted to comfort all. He was the only minister she could think of in their pulpit; he was The Minister.

  And now he was to move away from them. She couldn’t pray God to leave him for her sake. She mustn’t be ungrateful, but rather, grateful. She only wished she could give him something in return for all the comfort he had brought her.